Defining a Data Structure

Data Structures types must be defined before they can be used. Each Data Structure has a name and a list of members with their types. The name of the Data Structure and its members are case sensitive and must match the same conventions as entry names.

Data Structure types are declared using the keyword DATASTRUCTURE:

DATASTRUCTURE Name
  BEGIN
    members
  END

Rules:

• The name of the Data Structure must begin with an upper-case character and is further limited to upper-case characters, lower-case characters, digits and underscores. Spaces are not allowed.
• The name must be unique in the scope where it is declared.
• The name cannot be an ITP language keyword.
• We recommend using a mix of upper-case and lower-case characters.
• Members is a list of zero or more member declarations.

The DATASTRUCTURE statement defines the Data Structure and assigns it a name. After the definition variables can be declared which use the Data Structure type.

Defining members

Every member of the Data Structure type has a type and a name. The type can be either another ITP type (including other Data Set types) or a ARRAY or MAP of variables of an ITP type.

type Name
MAP type Name
ARRAY type Name
ARRAY type Name [number] (* Optional number of elements -- is ignored *)
FIELDSET Name
FIELDSET Name DEFINED_AS OtherName

FIELDSET members can be optionally defined using the DEFINED_AS keyword. This keyword indicates that the member should be treated as a Field Set with the alternative name when constructing Content Wizards or inserting Text Blocks.

Rules:

• The name of the members must begin with an upper-case character and is further limited to upper-case characters, lower-case characters, digits and underscores. Spaces are not allowed.
• The name must be unique in the data structure.
• The name cannot be an ITP language keyword. We recommend using a mix of upper-case and lower-case characters.
• Type can be any accepted ITP type, including previously declared data structure types.
• The size of ARRAY members is optional. Any value specified here will be ignored when a Data Structure variable is declared and the initial size will always be 0.

It is also possible to define Data Structure members inline in the definition. This is described in Inline DATASTRUCTURE definitions.

Example

The following example defines the Data Structure type Relation with five members:

DATASTRUCTURE Relation
BEGIN
  NUMBER CustomerNumber
  NUMBER Age
  FIELDSET Person
  FIELDSET Partner DEFINED_AS Person
  ARRAY FIELDSET Children DEFINED_AS Person (* Array of 'Person' Field Sets *)
END

Both the Partner member and every one of the elements in the Children array is treated as if it was a Person Field Set by the Content Wizard and Text Block handling. The model developer can differentiate between these members by using their member names.

Example

The following example defines the data structure type Policy:

DATASTRUCTURE Policy
BEGIN
  TEXT PolicyNumber
  NUMBER InsuredAmount
  FIELDSET PolicyData
  Relation Insured             (* Data Structure *)
  ARRAY Relation Benificiaries (* Array of Data Structures *)
END

Both the Insured and Benificiaries members have the previously declared Relation Data Structure type.