Ordinal User Defined Fields

Ordinal definitions allow you to define a specific field in a series of fields. When mainframe programmers design screens, they may specify the number of protected or unprotected fields in that screen. For example, a menu may contain 10 protected fields and 1 unprotected field. You can use this to your advantage by creating a user defined field at the first unprotected field. In this example, your user defined field would always be at the correct location for specifying the menu entry.

You should use ordinal field definitions if the number of fields (either protected or unprotected) on a screen is constant.

See Screen Fields for more information on protected and unprotected screen fields.

Example: Ordinal Unprotected Ordinality 1