You may maintain up to nine generations of a table. When you create a table, you specify how many generations of the table you wish to keep. As you create a new version of a table, tableBASE stores it. When the maximum number of generations has been created, tableBASE automatically deletes the oldest generation when you next create a version.
When you open a table, you may request a specific generation or you may default to the current generation (the generation most recently created). The generation to be opened is supplied as an optional parameter in the call to the tableBASE API. See GENERATION (fullword binary) for more information.
The absolute generation number of the table being accessed is returned to the user’s extended command area, and can be used to verify that the same generation of the table is being used from one call to the next. See 17. RETURNED-ABS-GEN-NO (halfword binary) for more information.