CVDATAL Function
The CVDATAL function returns the data associated with the provided ID from the CV Database; though it makes use of the longer character limitations available in version 2009.00 and later. The CVDATA function will truncate a given Group, Form or Identifier to 12, 12, 21 characters respectively, while the CVDATAL function makes full use of the 22, 22, 22 character limits now available. Functions relying on the original truncation should still make use of CVDATA function.
For popup cells, this data will be the entire packed string, for other cells, the data will be of the appropriate type as saved by an External Data cell.
Syntax
CVDATAL(<"Group">,<"Form">,"ID")
Where Group and Form together are optional depending on the type of data to be retrieved. See the following two examples for more information.
Example 1
To use CVDATAL to retrieve Global Cell Data (no Group or Form associations), where the identifier of the data is ALPHACELL:
CVDATAL("ALPHACELL")
Returns the value of the database record with the identifier ALPHACELL.
Example 2
To use CVDATAL to retrieve Form Cell Data, where the identifier of the data is ALPHACELL, in the Group AREA and Form DISTRICT:
CVDATAL("AREA", "DISTRICT", "ALPHACELL")
Returns the value of the database record with the identifier ALPHACELL, in Group AREA and Form DISTRICT.
Example 3
To see how character length affects an entry, consider a value entered into the database using the previous limitations, such as a Form of AVERYLONGFORM. It would have been written to the database as AVERYLONGFOR, and any queries searching for the full Form title would also be truncated. Hence, the query would be successful.
In version 2009.00 or later of CaseView, the CVDATA function will still truncate a query, and will still locate records entered with the form AVERYLONGFOR, but the CVDATAL function, in this case, would return a null value as it searches the database for the full form ID of AVERYLONGFORM.
