The Current Workspace Settings

Formatting

Encoding

Use this setting to specify the default report file format. The following encodings are supported by Monarch Data Prep Studio:

• ASCII: Select to make Monarch Data Prep Studio interpret report files as ASCII text and perform the conversion to ANSI. This is the default setting because most report files are created as ASCII text files.

• ANSI: Select to make Monarch Data Prep Studio read report files as ANSI text and perform no conversion. While most report files are created as ASCII text files, report files generated from Windows applications may be created as ANSI text files. The difference lies with characters 128 - 255 in the character set: in these positions, the ANSI character set includes international characters not present in the ASCII character set.

• UTF-8  (8-bit Unicode Transformation Format): Select to make Monarch Data Prep Studio interpret report files as UTF-8 files. UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding for Unicode, which is able to represent any character in the Unicode standard, yet it is backwards compatible with ASCII. If a valid BOM (Byte order mark) is detected within the input file, then Monarch Data Prep Studio will automatically select the UTF-8 type when opening the file.

• UTF-16 LE (16-bit Unicode Transformation format, Little Endian): Select to make Monarch Data Prep Studio interpret report files as UTF-16 LE files. UTF-16 LE is the Unicode Transformation Format that serializes a Unicode value as a sequence of two bytes, in little-endian format. If a valid BOM (Byte order mark) is detected within the input file, then Monarch Data Prep Studio will automatically select the UTF-16 LE type when opening the file.

• UTF-16 BE (16-bit Unicode Transformation format, Big Endian): Select to make Monarch Data Prep Studio interpret report files as UTF-16 BE files. UTF-16 BE is the Unicode Transformation Format that serializes a Unicode value as a sequence of two bytes, in big-endian format. If a valid BOM (Byte order mark) is detected within the input file, then Monarch Data Prep Studio will automatically select the UTF-16 BE type when opening the file.

• EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code): Select to make Monarch Data Prep Studio interpret report files as EBCDIC files. EBCDIC is an eight-bit character encoding system used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM mid-range computer operating systems.

These options may also be accessed in open files by right-clicking on the report in Report view.

Code page

Select the appropriate code page to use with the chosen input file encoding format. This option is only applicable to the ASCII (14 codepages available), ANSI (10 codepages available), and EBCDIC (16 codepages available) encoding systems.

These options may also be accessed in open files by right-clicking on the report in Report view.

File Type

This option is enabled only when EBCDIC is selected as the encoding type. Choose from one of the following options:

• Auto - Selecting this option instructs Monarch Data Prep Studio to automatically determine the record/line delimiter.

• Line Feed (LF) - This file type includes files where the end of record is an ASCII line feed character.

• Carriage Return (CR) -This file type includes files where the end of record is an ASCII carriage return character.

• EBCDIC New Line (NL) - This file type includes files where the end of record is an EBCDIC new line character.

• EBCDIC Line Feed (LF) - This file type includes files where the end of record is an EBCDIC line feed character.

• Fixed-length record - This file type includes files where each line (or record) consists of a fixed number of characters/bytes.

• Variable-length record - This file type includes files consisting of variable length lines (or records). Each record is preceded by a 4 byte record descriptor that specifies the record length.

• Variable length block - This file type includes files similar to variable-length records but also includes a block descriptor.

• Undefined-length record - This file type includes files with no defined record length or block.

• Custom byte as EOL - This file type includes files where the end of line is marked by a custom number of characters/bytes

Ignore print control characters

Select this setting to have Monarch Data Prep Studio ignore all print control characters below ASCII 32 except for:

• Form Feed (ASCII 12)

• Line Feed (ASCII 10)

• Carriage Return (ASCII 13)

• TAB (ASCII 09)

• Null (ASCII 0) which is converted to a space (ASCII 32).

Hide n Leading characters on each line

When you download print files from a network, a mini-computer, or a mainframe, one or more extra characters may appear at the beginning of each line. The exact number and type of characters depends on the operating system. These introductory characters are typically used for form feed, carriage return, or line feed printer commands. They are usually not needed in a PC file and may affect the way the file is displayed by Monarch Data Prep Studio.

A few communications programs are smart enough to either discard unnecessary characters or translate useful characters into the corresponding PC character codes. However, a form feed command is typically the only useful character you may get, and most communications programs are unable to translate it.

Use this setting to specify the number of leading characters to strip from each line of the report. Typical values are 0, 1, and 2. The value can be in the range 0 - 99.

For example, if you download from an IBM 3090 mainframe computer using an IRMA communications card, each line in the report will be preceded by two non-productive characters. You can strip those characters from the data by entering 2 in the Hide leading characters box.

Page Break

Ignore the form feed character

Selecting this setting causes Monarch Data Prep Studio to ignore all form feed (page break) characters in a report. Use this setting to turn off the hard-coded page breaks in a report file and replace them with page breaks based upon a Page Header trap or based upon the ForcePageBreakAfter n Lines setting (see below).

Page break on hidden leading text: n

For some mainframe and midrange system generated reports, especially from AS/400 systems, a page break could be indicated by a leading control character in the report file. This option allows you to hide the control character and to force a page break when a specified character is encountered.

Note: This option is not accessible unless you specify a Hide n Leading Characters setting.

Force page break after n lines

Use this setting to add page breaks to a file at regular intervals by specifying the number of lines you want on each page. Monarch Data Prep Studio scans the report for existing page breaks and inserts a virtual page break whenever a real page break has not been encountered before the number of lines specified.

The action of this setting is modified by the ForcePageBreakLookAhead setting.

Trap Characters

Trap characters

This setting allows you to specify whether you want to use Monarch Complete's standard trap characters or the alternate ones. The Alternate trap characters have been chosen to be compatible with different languages, so that characters that are commonly used in a language are not chosen as wildcard trap characters. For example, in the standard trap character set, the Alpha Trap uses a character which is common in Portuguese, the Numeric Trap uses a character which is common in Spanish, the Blank trap uses a character which is common in German, and the non-blank trap uses a character that is common in Scandinavian languages.

• English (Standard):  Select to use Monarch Classic's standard trap characters. (This is the default setting.)

• Latin: Select to use Latin alternate trap characters.

• Low ASCII: Select to use Low ASCII alternate trap characters.

Note: The characters used in the Alternate trap set are all low ANSI, i.e., lower than character code 128, so they will be consistent across all code pages.

Suppress zero values

This option, when selected, suppresses zero values when viewing data. Suppressed zeros are not printed, but are exported as zero values when the Table or Summary data are exported or copied to any format except text. For text export and copy operations, the suppressed zeros are exported as space characters to retain column integrity.

Note that Monarch Data Prep Studio implements zero suppression based upon the value that is returned to each cell after any rounding has been done on the value. For example, if you set the precision of a cell containing the value 0.004 to two decimal places, the application will round the value to 0.00. Since this value equates to zero, it will be suppressed if zero suppression is turned on. This is not the case in other applications, such as MS-Excel, where the underlying value 0.004 is retained and evaluated against zero. In Excel, the cell would be displayed as 0.00 and would not be suppressed, since its underlying value (0.004) is not equal to zero.

Display nulls as text

This option, when selected, applies the column type text to all columns with null values.

Display null values as

This option determines how null values should appear on screen in the Prepare window. You may enter a text string to use when representing null values. The string will be displayed using right justification.

In Monarch Data Prep Studio, as in most other database applications, a null value represents an unknown value or a value that cannot be calculated. Monarch Data Prep Studio returns null values under a variety of situations:

• When a calculated field expression causes division by zero.

• When the Minimum or Maximum calculation is used in a summary if no records match the key field values for a cell (e.g., there are no records of media type "CD" for the customer "Bluegrass Records"). In this case, no data is available to the cell.

• When the Standard Deviation or Variance calculation is used in a summary if only a single record matches the key field values for a cell. In this case, there is insufficient information available to perform the calculation.

• When the denominator in a Ratio measure calculation evaluates to zero causing the Ratio calculation to result in division by zero.

The application exhibits the following behavior when evaluating expressions and calculations that reference one or more null values:

Evaluation

When a null is used in an evaluation, the expression always evaluates to False. This is the case even when a null is evaluated against another null. The reason is that null is treated as an unknown value (when two unknown values are evaluated against each other, it cannot be said that they are equal).

Monarch Data Prep Studio's expression engine also does not support the constant NULL, so evaluations like the following one cannot be made: If(Amount=NULL, true result, false result)

However, an indirect method of evaluation against null will work in Monarch Data Prep Studio. For example, let's say that you want to create a filter in the Table window that removes all records where the Amount field value is null. Let's say that you also know that the Amount field values are never likely to be larger than 1,000,000.00 (one million) or smaller than –1,000,000.00 (negative one million). You could use either of the following filter expressions to remove records whose values are null:

Amount>-1000000
or
Amount<1000000

Either expression will evaluate to True for all records that contain a valid value in the Amount field, and will evaluate to False for all records that contain a null in the Amount field (since an evaluation against null returns False).

Calculation

When a null is referenced in a calculated field expression, the result of the expression is null. For example, the expression Amount*0.2 returns the Amount field value divided by 5 for all records where Amount contains a number. For records where Amount contains null, the expression returns null.

When one or more null values are included in a measure aggregation, the null values are ignored. This can produce the desired result or an unexpected result, depending upon your point of view. For example, the Average(Amount) calculation returns the average Amount by dividing the sum of the Amount values by the Count (the number of records from which the function drew Amount values). Records for which the Amount value is null are not included in the calculation. A different result is returned by the Ratio(Amount:Count) calculation, as this calculation tallies the Amount values and the Count values in two steps. First, the sum of the Amount values is calculated, then, in isolation, the Count for all records matching the same key field values is determined. Thus, in a Ratio calculation, the Count represents all of the records, including those whose Amount field contains null.

Highlight null cells

This setting instructs the application to highlight null (as opposed to, for example, blank) cells in the table/summary

Show whitespace characters

This setting instructs the application to show whitespace characters in the table/summary.

Month-based (12 calendar months starting on a desginated month)

Specifies that the fiscal year consists of 12 calendar months.

First month of the fiscal year

Selects the month of which the first day begins the new fiscal year.

Week 1 starts on January 1

Specifies that the first week of the fiscal year begins on January 1.

Each week starts on a specified weekday

Defines the start of a fiscal week and the week number of a partial week, if any, at the start of the year.

Week-based (52 or 53 whole weeks)

Specifies that the fiscal year consists of 52 or 53 whole weeks. You can specify the first day of each fiscal week, a reference month and day, and a rule for year start or end.

Select to divide the year into four 13-week quarters, then pick one of the following:

• 4-4-5 - Select to specify that each quarter is divided into a period with a pattern of 4 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks.

• 4-5-4 - Select to specify that each quarter is divided into a period with a pattern of 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 4 weeks.

• 5-4-4 - Select to specify that each quarter is divided into a period with a pattern of 5 weeks, 4 weeks, 4 weeks.

The year is divided into four 13-week quarters

Divides the year into four 13-week quarters and allows you to choose a week distribution pattern and quarter and period in which to place the 53rd week if necessary.

The year is divided into thirteen 4-week periods.

Divides the year into thirteen 4-week periods  and allows you to choose a period in which to place the 53rd week if necessary.

Week 1 starts on January 1.

Specifies that the first full week of the year starts on the first day of the week on or after January 1.

Each week starts on a specified weekday

Specifies that the week begins on a specific weekday and allows you to set a week number for a partial week.

Interval

Lists the names of the time intervals available.

Formatting Mask

Displays the formatting mask applied to the adjacent interval. To edit the formatting mask, double-click on the desired time interval, or select an interval and press the Edit Formatting Mask button .

Sample Value

Shows the effect of the formatting masks on today’s date. To change the date that the sample value is based on, adjust the sample date calendar control accordingly. This control is located on the right-hand side of the dialog immediately below the table containing the time intervals.

Description

Displays a description of each time interval.

Margins (inches|centimeters)

The Margins label at the top of the dialog displays the unit of measurement (either inches or centimeters) for all margin settings used in the current Monarch Classic session.

Note: The unit of measurement is determined by the Measurement setting in the International section of the Windows Control Panel.

Top

Accepts a value representing the top margin. The default value is .5" or 1cm, depending upon the Windows Control Panel Measurement setting.

Bottom

Accepts a value representing the bottom margin. The default value is .5" or 1cm, depending upon the Windows Control Panel Measurement setting.

Left

Accepts a value representing the left margin. The default value is .5" or 1cm, depending upon the Windows Control Panel Measurement setting.

Right

Accepts a value representing the right margin. The default value is .5" or 1cm, depending upon the Windows Control Panel Measurement setting.

Show Grid lines

Prints the grid lines between rows and columns, as displayed on screen.

Show Column Titles

Prints column titles at the top of each page.

Paper Size

Selects the desired paper size.

Orientation

Selects the desired paper orientation.

Page Header display box

Displays a page header of up to 3 lines, each with text left-aligned, centered, or right-aligned text. Enter text into the boxes provided. You can insert special characters and/or variables by clicking on the left arrow button and selecting the item from the list of variables:

• Page number

• Total pages

• Date

• Time

• Filter Name

• Sort Name

• Summary Name

• Input Name

• Workspace Name

Use custom font

Select this box to set font options.