The INFO Service provides access to internal SSA-NAME3 tables. It is primarily used by internal functions, however, it can be used by application programs to retrieve information from the various tables that comprise the User Service Group.

Information is retrieved from the User Service Group (USG) using ’tables’. The caller provides a Search Buffer which defines the search request (usually a table name). It may include ’table keys’ which are used to qualify which records are to be returned from a given table. Results are returned as ’rows’ from the table into an area provided by the caller, known as the Result Buffer.

One example of why an application may want to use the

INFO

Service is to get the ’signature’ of the Service Group. This can be used at search time to check against the last signature used to build keys. If there is a mismatch, the application would report an error.