The Formatting Service provides access to the SSA-NAME3 Formatting routine and, optionally, a Formatting User Exit. One pre-defined User Exit is supplied for the handling of English Nick-names and has the name,

N3FTEN

. The User Exit for the Formatting routine is specified in the Algorithm Definition, for example:

FORMATTING=N3FTEN

A null user exit is available for use when no Formatting User Exit is required. This is specified as follows,

FORMATTING=N3FTE

The main objective of the SSA-NAME3 Formatting routine is to break a name into words (or ’tokens’) and to transform those tokens according to user specified rules in the Algorithm Definition and Editlist. Country specific transformation rules should be handled via the Formatting User Exit.

The Formatting Service is always invoked internally by the

NAMESET

and

MATCH

Services as part of the preparation for key building and matching. The Formatting Service could be called directly by an Application if the requirement is to tokenize a name before that name is used for some other purpose.