A database provides for the storage and retrieval of data. The reason for creating a database, however, is so that the data can be easily processed for reports. If data from a series of customer orders are stored on the computer, you would expect to do more than simply retrieve that data. You might accumulate totals so that you could report the number of units sold or the dollar amount in sales per day, per week, per month and so on. A database provides a way to transform data into information.
Correlatives and conversions provide a great deal of flexibility in creating INFO/ACCESS reports. You can define conversions to convert raw data into a particular format. The user can also define correlatives that permit access and process data in existing attributes or other database files. Conversions are stored in Attribute 7 and correlatives are stored in Attribute 8 of an Attribute Definition item. See the Correlatives and Conversions section in the INFO/ACCESS Reference Manual for a full description of the usage of correlative and conversion codes.
The following topics are presented in this section:
Stored Format and Output Format
Translating Data from Another File
See Also