Using the tabs on the left-hand pane you can select from the six available API Functions (Open, Keys, Ranges, Match, Close, Info). When a tab is clicked, its available input parameters and parameter values will be listed in the left-hand pane below the tabs. The input parameters are made up of "Controls" to direct what specific action the function will take, and "Data" on which the function will perform its actions. Many of these parameters are "hotspots", meaning that a mouse click will transfer the selected parameter and value into the appropriate text box on the right-hand pane.

If a parameter is a hotspot, the mouse pointer will change to .

Hovering the mouse cursor over a parameter or parameter value will also display a pop-up description of that field.

When an API function tab is selected, the right-hand pane will change to show all of the function’s input and output parameters as text boxes. Input text boxes have a white background. Output text boxes have a grey background. These will be the parameters that are actually used to make the call.

As said in the first paragraph, some of the parameters and values can be easily entered into the text boxes via clicks on the values in the left-hand pane, however, others such as the actual name or address data to be used in a particular function call must be manually typed or cut and pasted into the input text boxes from another location.

Once the text boxes on the right-hand frame are completed, they will closely resemble how you would specify the parameters in your own program code. To execute a function, click on the

Call

button in the lower right-hand corner of the right-hand pane and view the results. It is useful when debugging program code to put in some print or display statements after the call to the SSA-NAME3 function. After running the program to produce some debug output, copy the parameters from the program’s function call into the Workbench environment to replicate the function call and check if the output is the same.

The Workbench will remember the results of each function as you move around the different functions. Read the Functions section in the

API Reference Guide

for more detail about each function.