Understanding Fields in Record Definitions

You create record definitions by adding field definitions to a new record definition or by cloning and modifying an existing record definition. You can add fields in any order and reorder them at any time. Locate keys at the top of the record definition, in order of importance.

Each field has basic attributes that are shared across all records that contain the field. These field properties include data type, field name, long name, short name, field length (or integer and decimal positions), formatting, help context number, and translate values. If you change any of these attributes for a field, the change affects every occurrence of the field in every record definition. If the change is not appropriate for every occurrence of this field, consider defining a new field instead.

Note:

Changing a field name or length requires modification of the underlying SQL table, either by running the SQL Build or SQL Alter menu items or by a system administrator action. For example, if you change a field length for one record definition and 30 other record definitions contain the same field name, then you must build or alter 31 records. If the records are all within one project, you can run the build process on the project instead.