Understanding the Effects of Changing Field Definitions

When you develop new record definitions or modify existing ones, you might need to change characteristics or attributes for a field. If you change attributes in a field definition, the change affects every occurrence of the field in every record definition. So, before you change basic attributes in a field definition, consider how it affects all of the record definitions in which the field occurs. If the change is not appropriate for every occurrence of the field, consider defining a new field instead.

If a change is still needed, you should determine the extent of the change by finding out how many records are affected. Do this by using the Find Definition References tool. Open the field definition and select Edit, and then Find Definition References or right-click and select the option from the pop-up menu. If you are in a record definition window, another method is to select the field, right-click the field name, and select Find Definition References - Field from the pop-up menu.

The Find Definition References tab in the Output window displays a list of all projects, record definitions, page definitions, messages, channels, file layouts, and PeopleCode programs in which the field is used. Double-click a line of output to open the corresponding definition in the definition workspace.

Note:

Changing the name or length of a field definition requires that you modify the underlying SQL table. Do this either by running the build process and specifying Create Tables or Alter Tables, or by carrying out an action issued by your system administrator. For example, if you change the length of a field definition and 30 record definitions contain the same field name, then you must create or alter 30 records.