Data Element - Numeric Processing Type

The Numeric data type processes data as a number, allows inclusion or suppression of leading zeros, and allows alignment of decimal positions. Use number processing when the data being disguised are only numeric values. Both character and numeric source fields can be identified for the data element. It includes special processing for numeric values, and decimal positions. These options are set on the Processing Type view. How the number is passed to the rule is controlled by the number processing options. One option controls the number of digits in the value and another option controls the number of decimal positions.

Select the number processing options you wish to use:

Number of Digits

• Vary: Only use significant digits from the source value (default).

• Fixed: Pad source values with zeros so that the number of digits is always the same. If this option is selected, you must enter a Number of digits. This creates the desired length, but does not align decimals. When selecting this option, all fields will be the same length. The number entered here is the total number of digits to be processed including decimal positions. This option is especially important when one or more of the high-order digits are, or might be, zero and you want to retain the zeros.

  The option to return a fixed number of positions is important when the values for the data element must always be the same length, and it is possible for one or more of the high-order digits to be zero. For example, social security number must always be nine digits, so this value should be set to 9. If it is not set to 9, any leading zeros would be suppressed and any social security number that started with zero would be presented to the rule as eight digits.

Decimal Positions

• Vary: Process based on source metadata definition (default). If this option is selected, the number of decimal positions is determined by the metadata definition.

• Fixed: Align decimal positions for all source values. This option controls the number of decimal digits. If decimal alignment is required, you must enter the number of decimal positions.

  If this option is selected, zeros are added to data that contains fewer decimal positions.

  You can set the number of decimal positions to zero to cause all decimal positions to be dropped during inbound normalization. During outbound normalization, the decimal positions with a value of zero are added based on the metadata definition.

  If, for example, decimal alignment is set to two decimal positions, and the source value does not have any decimal positions defined, two decimal positions are added. If the source value has more than two decimal positions defined, the data is considered a long data value, and whatever action is specified for long data values will be taken. For more information, see Invalid-and-Long-Data-Values.

Numeric source fields of all types are converted to display format before being passed to the rule.

When a number is stored in a character field, it may have been edited for readability so that it included additional non-numeric characters that are not to be processed. Number processing includes validation that detects edited fields as invalid. Edited fields must either be handled as text fields or with custom processing.

A character field can be processed as a number as long as it contains a number value and no other editing characters. This means that values such as $1,234.00 or 12-34-56 are considered invalid for number processing. To process edited fields, a custom function (see Manage-Custom-Functions) or field mask (see Field-Mask-Processing) is required to normalize the value.