Posted by Barbara Brazil on October 17, 2005 at 16:12:37:
Scenario: You've decided to give the multi-keyed file system a try. You have a FORMAT statement with all the fields defined. Now you want to create sub-keys. The CreateKey statement requires that you know the starting position in the record of each field you wish to use as a sub-key...
Are you going to count the bytes? Not a fun thing if your record contains more than one field and especially if your sub-key is a numeric field (right-justified, remember?).
Here's a tip. Use DbManager to generate a description of the file from your FORMAT statement! Then you can simply click on the "Fields" tab in DbManager and you'll see all the fields listed with their starting positions and lengths!
The Import from FORMAT tool is on the "Utilities" tab in DbManager.
bb