Supporting Extended MICR Fields

By default, the Transaction Server is configured to support eight (8) MICR fields using indices 1 through 8. To support any additional extended MICR fields (for example, fields 9 through 15), the database must be configured accordingly.

Seven extended MICR fields are presently in the ITEM table in the database: FIELD_9 through FIELD_15. They are, by default, all given VARCHAR data types of length one. If left as-is, they default to unsupported; this means the Transaction Server will not save any information in these fields during capture or load processing.

To enable an extended MICR field in the database, change its length to be greater than one. The Transaction Server detects this and saves information to those fields as it receives it. For example, to add support for extended MICR fields 10, 11, and 14, apply the following SQL statements to the database after it is built:

ALTER TABLE FTM.ITEM ALTER COLUMN FIELD_10 SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR(32) FOR BIT DATA;
ALTER TABLE FTM.ITEM ALTER COLUMN FIELD_11 SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR(28) FOR BIT DATA;
ALTER TABLE FTM.ITEM ALTER COLUMN FIELD_14 SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR(16) FOR BIT DATA;
REORG TABLE FTM.ITEM;

Note:

The fields may be any length, but no longer than 255. The fields don’t all have to be the same length. Choose a length that reflects the maximum amount of data expected to be received for each field. Choosing the maximum length of 255 may seem the safest bet, but it will cause excessive database storage to be wasted for each item stored. If the Transaction Server receives any information for one of these fields that exceeds the specified length, it truncates the field accordingly.
Any MICR field whose length was not modified will continue to be unsupported. This configuration requirement only applies to field 9 through field 15. Do not attempt to modify the lengths of fields 1 through 8.

Once the MICR field lengths have been altered, the Transaction Server must be restarted for the changes to take effect.