Selection Criteria

Type

Concept

Purpose

In a script or report, you can tell DataEase to process or display all the records in a specified table, or only some of the records. The limiting factors that determine which records are selected for processing are called selection criteria.

The selection criteria tell DataEase to compare the value in the specified field in each record to a comparison value that you specify in a script or selection filter. When the procedure or report is run, the records that meet the defined selection criteria are processed. Records that do not meet the criteria are not processed.

Usage

There are two situations in which selection criteria must be enclosed in parentheses:

Criteria must be enclosed in parentheses when used with a relational operator to select records based on the values stored in a table other than the Primary table. (See Example2.)

When two sets of selection criteria are combined with the and and or operators, the criteria must be enclosed in parentheses to clarify the meaning. (See Example 3.)

Example 1

The statement:

 for MEMBERS with TOTAL DUE > 100 ;

..tells DataEase to process only the MEMBERS records that have a value greater than 100 in the TOTAL DUE field.

Example 2

The statement:

 for MEMBERS with  ( sum of RESERVATIONS TOTAL DUE > 5000) ;

..tells DataEase to process only the MEMBERS records whose related RESERVATIONS have a combined TOTAL DUE that is greater than 5000.

Example 3

The statement:

 for MEMBERS with ( STATE = "NY" or STATE = "NJ" )

  and TOTAL DUE > 200 ;

..tells DataEase to process MEMBERS records for only the members who live in either New York or New Jersey and who have a TOTAL DUE greater than 200.