Database fields that you might need to define

The following recommendations and rules might help you define the database fields for your application group:

• You must define at least one database field for the application group. You can define up to 128 database fields; however, you should define only as many database fields as you need to retrieve your reports, and no more. Most customers find that they typically need no more than three or four database fields to retrieve any report.
• You must define at least one database field to hold a date or date/time value, even if the report does not contain a date. If the report does not contain a date, then you can specify a default value for the date on the Load Information page in the application. You can specify any valid date or you can specify to use the date that the report is being loaded into the system.
• You must define a database field for each index field that occurs in the input data.
• If the application group contains more than one application (source of data), then you must define a database field that identifies the applications that are assigned to the application group. See Database and Displayed Values for more information.
• The name of the database field must match the name of an index field in the index file or you must map the index field to the database field on the Load Information page in the application.
• You should identify a date field that Content Manager OnDemand can use to segment the application group index data. The segment field enables the searching of specific tables of application group data rather than all of the tables.
• You can set up a database field so that users can search by using aliases for actual database values. See Database and Displayed Values for more information.
• For a Db2 partitioned database that resides on multiple nodesyou can specify the database field that is used to partition the index data across the multiple nodes. A partition field might enable better performance for very large databases.
• You can specify the database field that is used as the clustering index. A cluster index is maintained or improved dynamically as data is inserted into the associated table, by attempting to insert new rows physically close to the rows for which the key values of the index are in the same range. This process might slow the loading of database rows, but should improve the performance of retrievals (queries from a client). This option cannot be applied to existing tables; only new application groups or new application group data tables can make use of this option.