Unqualified SSA


Only the segment name is provided by the application program. The Segment name can be passed during the call. Unqualified SSA structure will be like below.

Position Description
1-8 Segment name
9 Blank

The declaration of the same structure in COBOL program like below.

01 UNQUALIFIED-SSA.
   05 	SEGMENT-NAME  	PIC X(08)  VALUE SPACE.
   05	FILLER        	PIC X(01)  VALUE SPACE.

An unqualified SSA layout total length is 9 bytes. Segment name occupies 8 bytes in the total layout. SEGMENT-NAME in the above layout represents the segment name.

The last byte always contains space. IMS DL/I use the last byte to determine the type of SSA. It specifies the SEGMENT TYPE the program is get the segment.

Here programmer doesn’t indicate a particular occurrence of a segment because programmer don't care which occurrence of a segment needs to get.

Unqualified SSA always extract first occurrence of the segment. To access a particular segment, move the name of the segment in the SEGMENT-NAME field.