o You must terminate the DEFINE statement and the END statement
with periods.
o The path name can be a full or a relative path specification.
The last given name in the path name is the name you assign to
the new record definition. You can specify an absolute version
number with the path name.
o The given name of the new record definition is a string of up to
31 characters from the set A-Z, 0-9, _, and $. The first
character must be a letter from A-Z, and the last character must
not be _ or $. You can use 8-bit alphabetic characters in path
names.
o Use the optional DESCRIPTION clause to include text in the CDD to
document the record definition. You must use the keyword
DESCRIPTION and the text delimiters /* and */ to insert one or
more lines of text describing the record into the DEFINE
statement.
o The field description statement defines the whole record. You
can use an elementary, STRUCTURE, COPY, VARIANTS, or VARIANTS_OF
field description statement, but you can use only one field
description statement to define a record.
STRUCTURE, COPY, and VARIANT field description statements are
themselves subdivided and defined by subordinate field
description statements.
o If you specify a path name in the END clause, it must match the
path name in the corresponding DEFINE clause.
o If you specify a given name in the END clause, it must be the
given name of the new data definition and match the final given
name in the path specification of the corresponding DEFINE
clause.