A region is a logical structure that holds information about a portion of a database, such as key-size and record-size. A key is the internal representation of a global variable name. In this chapter the terms global variable name and key are used interchangeably. A record refers to a key and its data.
A Global Directory must have at least one region. A region only maps to a single segment. More than one name may map to a region.
A region name:
Must begin with an alphabetic character.
Can include alphanumerics, dollar signs ($), and underscores (_).
Can have from 1 to 16 characters.
GDE automatically converts region names to uppercase, and uses DEFAULT for the default region name.