To meet the SQL requirements of some RDBMSs, the Acu4GL runtime for those systems will truncate long field names to the maximum allowed by the RDBMS. (In the case of the OCCURS clause described above, the truncation is to the original name, not the appended index numbers. However, the final name, including the index number, is limited to the RDBMS maximum.) It's a good idea to make sure that your field names are unique (and meaningful) within the first 18 characters. The database you are connecting to may allow longer names and if so, more characters will be used. Names longer than 18 characters will generate a warning. Names longer than 30 characters will result in an error, and no XFD will be generated for that file. 30 characters is the max. Instead of allowing default truncation, you can use the NAME directive to give a shorter alias to a field with a long name. Note that within the COBOL application you will continue to use the original name. The NAME directive affects only the data dictionary connection to the RDBMS table.