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Appendix 2 - Empress Datatypes

Empress supports many datatypes. They are listed below along with their parameters.

1) Character

CHAR (length, type)


length - maximum number of characters


type - may be one of (1-3)


. 1 - printable characters only, leading and trailing blanks removed


TEXT (print length, primary storage, overflow storage, number of extents)

2) Date

DATE (format)


format - may be one of (0-8)


0 - 19820627


1 - 27 June 1982


2 - June 27, 1982


3 - 06/27/82


4 - 27/06/82


5 - 27 Jun 82


6 - Jun 27, 82


7 - 06/27/1982


8 - 27/06/1982


TIME (format-see DATE above) hh:mm:ss

3) Decimal

DECIMAL (maximum digits, number of decimal places)


DOLLAR (maximum size, format)


format - may be one of (1-3)


1 - $1,234.00


2 - $****1,234.00


3 - 1234.00

4) Float

FLOAT - 4-byte float: scientific notation


LONGFLOAT - 8-byte float: scientific notation

5) Integer

SHORTINTEGER - 1-byte integer (-127 to 127)


INTEGER - 2-byte integer


(-32767 to 32767)


LONGINTEGER - 4-byte integer (-2147483647 to 2147483647)


Updated : 19 February 2008