Character removal

Content Manager OnDemand can remove any combination of embedded, leading, and trailing characters from the index values that it extracts from input data, before loading the index data into the database. For example, suppose that you want to store telephone numbers in the database. If you specify the - (dash) character in the Embedded field, then Content Manager OnDemand removes the - (dash) characters found within the telephone numbers (that is, 303-555-1212 would be stored as 3035551212). The character removal feature can help to conserve index space. For example, suppose that you want to define a variable length database field to hold customer names. If you specify the blank character in the Trailing field, then Content Manager OnDemand removes all of the blank characters that occur after the last valid alphabetic or numeric character in the input field. You can specify up to 64 different characters to remove.

Content Manager OnDemand removes characters from the index value until it encounters the first character in the index value that is not part of the character removal mask. For example, if you type 01- (zero one dash) in the Leading field, and the index value is 1001-50016834, then Content Manager OnDemand removes 1001- and stores the index value 50016834 in the database.

Remember: You can specify characters from the 256 bytes in a character set. The characters that you specify must be display (printable) characters. Characters 1 - 31 are reserved for control characters, and cannot be specified. The keys on a standard keyboard represent characters 32 - 127. Characters 127 - 256 are extended characters. The extended characters can be specified by using the numeric keypad. To specify an extended character, press and hold the Alt key and use the numeric keypad to type a zero followed by the ASCII character code of the character. For example, to specify the pound sterling character (ASCII character code 163), press and hold the Alt key and type 0163 by using the numeric keypad. The client displays the pound sterling sign in the character removal field.

To find an exact match, the search string that the user specifies must match the value in the database. If you remove a character from index values, then your users must type search strings that do not include the character that you removed or you must remove the character from the search string specified by the user before Content Manager OnDemand searches the database. See the Field Information page in application groups for information about how to remove a character from the search string specified by the user before Content Manager OnDemand builds the SQL to query the database.