Enform Plus Reference Manual

Statements

Enform Plus Reference Manual—422684-001

4-25

LINK Statement

The LINK statement allows you to specify a connecting relationship between dictionary

record descriptions. The syntax of the LINK statement is:

record-name1 and record-name2

are the names of dictionary record descriptions containing a common field.

field-name

is the name of a field common to both of the record descriptions.

qualified-field-name1 and qualified-field-name2

are the names of fields uniquely identified as components of the record descriptions

being linked.

OPTIONAL

indicates that Enform Plus is to build logical records for the link by including all of

the records from the data file whose record description is specified on the left side of

the LINK OPTIONAL statement. Enform Plus includes each record from this data

file even when no matching record is found in the data file whose record description

is specified on the right side of the LINK OPTIONAL statement.

Both the LINK statement and the LINK OPTIONAL statement establish a connecting

relationship, called a link. (You can also establish a link with a WHERE clause.) A link

allows you to view your data in a new manner. When you specify either statement,

Enform Plus establishes a new logical record description that consists of fields from

both linked record descriptions. Enform Plus then builds a set of logical records for the

new logical record description.

Enform Plus builds the set of logical records by selecting records from each of the data

files associated with the linked record descriptions. When you use either statement, you

must identify a field (called a linking field) from each record description. Enform Plus

uses the data value of these linking fields to determine which records from each data file

become part of the set of logical records. Enform Plus then uses the set of logical

records to build the target records from which your Enform Plus output is produced. If

you include a nonlinking WHERE clause (see the WHERE Clause

on page 5-72 for a

definition of nonlinking WHERE clauses) in a query, such as:

WHERE empnum GT 100

the target records include information only from those logical records that satisfy the

restriction specified in the WHERE clause.

{ record-name1 [ TO ] [ OPTIONAL ] record-name2 }

{ VIA field-name }

LINK { } ,...[ ; ]

{ qualified-field-name1 [ TO ] [ OPTIONAL ] }

{ qualified-field-name2 }