Maintaining the Relativity Database

A Relativity database is comprised of two distinct parts:

• The COBOL syntax file - this could be a Relativity symbol table file (.rst file) or a COBOL schema tree file (.cst file).
• The catalog file (.rcg file), which contains the augmented file definitions and the generated relational tables.

The Relativity Designer supplies mechanisms that allow you to maintain both of these parts.

A COBOL syntax file is created from the file and record descriptions when you import from a COBOL source or from an existing .rst or .cst file. From time to time, you will be required to update these when your source FDs change or further FDs are added to the database.

You can further augment these descriptions by adding more data items, condition items, date transforms, and so on. See Augmenting the COBOL File Definition on the FD Form for more information.

After the file definitions have been prepared, you can define the relational tables by associating the columns in the table with COBOL data items from the FD. The relational tables allow SQL generated by an ODBC-enabled application to access the COBOL data in a relational manner. For more information, see Defining Relational Tables on the Table Form.