The DECIMAL clause is used to indicate that the field is a packed decimal number. The ZONED clause is used to indicate that the field is a zoned decimal number. The precision field indicates the number of digits in the number. The scale field is used to specify the ___location of the decimal point in the number. It is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point. If scale is omitted, then a value of 0 is assumed.
Note that there are different encoding formats of zoned decimal numbers depending on whether the character set being used is EBCDIC-based or ASCII-based. If the language of the source data is EBCDIC, then the zoned decimal numbers in that file must match the EBCDIC encoding. If the language is ASCII-based, then the numbers must match the ASCII encoding.
If the EXTERNAL parameter is specified, then the data field is a character string whose length matches the precision of the field.