DDS concepts

A traditional means of describing data attributes (such as the names and lengths of records and fields) is to specify the data attributes in the application programs themselves. However, data description specifications (DDS) describe data attributes in file descriptions that are external to the application program that processes the data.

DDS is a convenient alternative to describe data attributes on the IBM i operating system.

The file types that use DDS are physical and logical files, display files, printer files, and intersystem communications function (ICF) files.