A typical use of tableBASE in your program is as follows: open the table, retrieve and/or update rows in the table, store the table to disk if you wish to save any changes made, close the table.
When a table is opened, storage is dynamically allocated in a TSR managed by tableBASE, and a copy of the table is loaded from the table library. A table may be opened for write in only one region or job at a time, but a table can be opened for read and shared by multiple regions or tasks.
The data within a tableBASE table is made available to the application one row at a time. The application provides the storage for tableBASE parameters; e.g., command areas, row areas, etc.
If the table size increases as a result of inserting new rows, tableBASE automatically expands the table.
All tableBASE processing is done in memory, using TSRs managed by tableBASE.
All changes to the table’s contents are made to the in-memory version. If changes to the table are to be made permanent, the table must be written back to the library. This is done with a Store command (see Store Table (ST)).