Standard Global Names

When you define a class in your IDE, global names for your class are generated based on the class name.

For example, let’s define the following class, GlobalsTest.President:

Class GlobalsTest.President Extends %Persistent
{

/// President's name (last,first)
Property Name As %String(PATTERN="1U.L1"",""1U.L");

/// Year of birth
Property BirthYear As %Integer; 

/// Short biography
Property Bio As %Stream.GlobalCharacter;

/// Index for Name
Index NameIndex On Name;

/// Index for BirthYear
Index DOBIndex On BirthYear;

}

After compiling the class, we can see the following storage definition generated at the bottom of the class:

Storage Default
{
<Data name="PresidentDefaultData">
<Value name="1">
<Value>%%CLASSNAME</Value>
</Value>
<Value name="2">
<Value>Name</Value>
</Value>
<Value name="3">
<Value>BirthYear</Value>
</Value>
<Value name="4">
<Value>Bio</Value>
</Value>
</Data>
<DataLocation>^GlobalsTest.PresidentD</DataLocation>
<DefaultData>PresidentDefaultData</DefaultData>
<IdLocation>^GlobalsTest.PresidentD</IdLocation>
<IndexLocation>^GlobalsTest.PresidentI</IndexLocation>
<StreamLocation>^GlobalsTest.PresidentS</StreamLocation>
<Type>%Storage.Persistent</Type>
}

Notice, in particular, the following storage keywords:

The DataLocation is the global where class data will be stored. The name of the global is the complete class name (including the package name) with a “D” appended to the name, in this case, ^GlobalsTest.PresidentD.
The IdLocation (often the same as the DataLocation) is the global where the ID counter will be stored, at its root.
The IndexLocation is the global where the indexes for the class will be stored. The name of the global is the complete class name with an “I” appended to the name, or, ^GlobalsTest.PresidentI.
The StreamLocation is the global where any stream properties will be stored. The name of the global is the complete class name with an “S” appended to the name, or, ^GlobalsTest.PresidentS.

After creating and storing a few objects of our class, we can view the contents of these globals in the Terminal:

USER>zwrite ^GlobalsTest.PresidentD
^GlobalsTest.PresidentD=3
^GlobalsTest.PresidentD(1)=$lb("",1732,"1","Washington,George")
^GlobalsTest.PresidentD(2)=$lb("",1735,"2","Adams,John")
^GlobalsTest.PresidentD(3)=$lb("",1743,"3","Jefferson,Thomas")
 
USER>zwrite ^GlobalsTest.PresidentI
^GlobalsTest.PresidentI("DOBIndex",1732,1)=""
^GlobalsTest.PresidentI("DOBIndex",1735,2)=""
^GlobalsTest.PresidentI("DOBIndex",1743,3)=""
^GlobalsTest.PresidentI("NameIndex"," ADAMS,JOHN",2)=""
^GlobalsTest.PresidentI("NameIndex"," JEFFERSON,THOMAS",3)=""
^GlobalsTest.PresidentI("NameIndex"," WASHINGTON,GEORGE",1)=""
 
USER>zwrite ^GlobalsTest.PresidentS
^GlobalsTest.PresidentS=3
^GlobalsTest.PresidentS(1)="1,239"
^GlobalsTest.PresidentS(1,1)="George Washington was born to a moderately prosperous family of planters in colonial ..."
^GlobalsTest.PresidentS(2)="1,195"
^GlobalsTest.PresidentS(2,1)="John Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, and entered Harvard College at age 1..."
^GlobalsTest.PresidentS(3)="1,202"
^GlobalsTest.PresidentS(3,1)="Thomas Jefferson was born in the colony of Virginia and attended the College of Willi..."

The subscript of ^GlobalsTest.PresidentD is the IDKey. Since we did not define one of our indexes as the IDKey, the ID is used as the IDKey. For more information on IDs, see Controlling How IDs Are Generated.

The first subscript of ^GlobalsTest.PresidentI is the name of the index.

The first subscript of ^GlobalsTest.PresidentS is the ID of the bio entry, not the ID of the president.

You can also view these globals in the Management Portal (System Explorer > Globals).

Important:

Only the first 31 characters in a global name are significant, so if a complete class name is very long, you might see global names like ^package1.pC347.VeryLongCla4F4AD. The system generates names such as these to ensure that all of the global names for your class are unique. If you plan to work directly with the globals of a class, make sure to examine the storage definition so that you know the actual name of the global. Alternatively, you can control the global names by using the DEFAULTGLOBAL parameter in your class definition. See User-Defined Global Names.

Hashed Global Names