Understanding the terminology and concepts in Infor Lawson Applications

What Is a Record?

A record is a set of related data from a database file. For example, if you have a database file for employee information, a record from that file would contain the information for one employee: the employee's name, address, status, and so on.

Each type of data in a database file—such as employee number, last name, or status—is a field. Each record is one set of values for the different fields.

What Is a Key Field?

A key field is a field on an application form for which a value is required before you can access any data associated with that application form. It is a "key" field because it is a "key" to unlocking your access to the data.

If you use list-based form access, you must select values for each key field before you access a form. The key field appears in a list before you open the form. After the form is open, the key field is at the top of most application forms (if you use form-based access, the key field is usually selected at the top of the form). For more information, see the section "Navigating within Lawson Applications".

For example, Employee Deduction has a Company, an Employee, and a Deduction field at the top. If you type or select values for these fields and then perform an Inquire form action, you will see any specific data associated with that deduction for that employee for that company.

What Is a Product Line?

A product line is a group of programs and their data. It is subdivided into suites such as Financials and Human Resources. These are further subdivided into applications. Applications consist of programs and database tables or files. For example, if you use the Human Resources suite and the General Ledger application, your product line would hold all the applications and database tables in the Human Resources suite, as well as the General Ledger application and tables.

You may also have multiple product lines, depending on your business needs. For example, you may have one product line for testing and another product line with the same applications that is used for production. A product line generally has a unique name that identifies the version of the applications it contains.

Your Lawson administrator sets up each user with a default product line. If you need to access other product lines, you can select the appropriate one (if you have access to it) when you are using the application.