Call Areas in User-Written Functions

Enrichment communicates with the user-written function through data buffers called “call areas”. Programmers do not have to be concerned with these. However, the programmer who writes the user-written function does need to understand the call areas.

When Enrichment executes the function it passes it two memory buffers called the “input call area” and the “output call area”. Enrichment formats these call areas with specific data to ensure validity and appends them with a data area for the input argument (input area) and return string (output area).

Note: The COBOL code in Example COBOL User-Written Function illustrates these areas and defines their content.