Field Position and Length Columns

The following values are used to define the position and lengths of fields:

ibmValFixedPos: The offset of the field in the record. It is one based, so the first field in the record is at offset 1 and not at offset zero.
ibmValFixedLen: The length of the field, in characters. For a variable length field, this value is zero and the ibmValVarPos and ibmValVarLen values are used to determine the length information.
ibmValVarPos: The position in the current record that contains the length of the field.
ibmValVarLen: The length of the record length field.

The following values show how to define a field that is at offset 1 in the record and is two characters long:

ibmValFixedPos: 1
ibmValFixedLen: 2
ibmValVarPos: (Null or Empty)
ibmValVarLen: (Null or Empty)

The following values show how to define a field that is at offset 5 in the record. The length of the field is determined by interpreting the two characters at offset 3 as a number, which means the field could have a length of 0 to 99.

ibmValFixedPos: 5
ibmValFixedLen: 0
ibmValVarPos: 3
ibmValVarLen: 2

Note:

When referencing the fields after a variable length field, the offset entered in the table does not need to take into account the length of the preceding variable data, which can be made up of one or more preceding variable length fields. The offset automatically has the length of the preceding variable length data added to it when the field is analyzed.
If a field is referenced after a variable length field, all previous variable length fields must be defined. Otherwise, there is no way to determine the correct offset for the field being referenced.