Specifying temporary selection criteria to browse a data file

File-AID Selection Criteria Menu Screen

Use the Selection Criteria Menu screen to access facilities for defining selection conditions based on formatted or unformatted field selection criteria, global variables, and/or options for reading records.

Option 1 (Enter selection criteria options) displays the Selection Criteria Options screen. Here you can tell File-AID where you want to begin selecting records, establish a random read pattern, and set limits on the number of records processed.

Steps:

1. Enter a 1 in the OPTION field.
2. Enter the description SC FOR EMPMAST in the Member list description field.
   Since this is temporary selection criteria the description is optional. However, if you decide to SAVE this criteria permanently, File-AID displays this description on the Member List screen.
3. Enter the description LIMIT TO 12 RECORDS MEETING THE FOLLOWING: SINGLE AND LOCAL TAX LE 7 OR LIVING IN AREA CODES 404, 408, OR 415 in the Long Description field.
   Once again, since this is temporary criteria, descriptions are not needed unless you SAVE your temporary criteria,
4. Press Enter. File-AID displays the Selection Criteria Options screen as shown in Selection Criteria Options Screen.

More about temporary selection criteria

• From the criteria menu you can access selection options, global variables, or either of the two types of field selection criteria: formatted and unformatted.
• Formatted selection criteria allow you to select records based on data within a field as specified by a record layout.
• Unformatted selection criteria allow you to select records based on freeform data specifications without using a record layout.
• Processing of your temporary selection criteria occurs when you END from the menu.
• If you specify usage option Q (Quick) on the Browse - Dataset Specification screen, File-AID creates temporary criteria but bypasses the Selection criteria menu screen and takes you directly to the unformatted selection criteria screen. When you END from the unformatted screen, your selection criteria is applied immediately. With usage Q, default options are used and all records are read and selected based on the defaults you establish in your 0.2 Selection Parameters for number of records to search and select.