Understanding Field Lengths and Column Widths

Changing the length of a field and changing the width of a column do not yield the same results. You can modify the display length of most fields from the appropriate item properties form. In a columnar section, you can change the display length of the column variable but not the column heading. Changing the display length of a field changes the number of characters that the batch engine places in the field. For example, in a report, you include the Address Number field that is defined in data dictionary to accommodate 20 characters. None of the records in the report include an address number that is longer than five characters. In the appropriate item properties form, you can modify the display length of the address number field to five. The address number field displays five characters on the report. However, because the column width is large enough to accommodate 20 characters, you see a large amount of white space following the five characters. To eliminate the white space, you can size the address number column so that it is only as wide as the five-character display length.

Changing the width of a column changes the amount of space that is allotted for displaying data. You can change the size of columns in the Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Report Design Aid (RDA) workspace. This method of changing the column size does not affect the field length. If you size the column to be smaller than its associated data, the data is truncated. For example, if you change the column width of the alpha name field to display 10 characters, but many of the names in the database are greater than 10 characters, the names are cut off in the report. If the column contains a numeric field, the column contains asterisks rather than truncating the number.

When you modify a column heading and enter text that is too long for the column heading length, the entire column heading appears on the report, oftentimes overlapping other columns. RDA provides two column heading fields for each column so that you can split long column headings into two lines.

When a field is populated with data that is longer than the field length, and the data does not reside in the database, the data is truncated. When a string data type, such as media objects, is fetched from the database, the data text wraps within the column. Text wrapping is controlled by the Absolute Position option on the Advanced tab of the appropriate section properties form.