Description
Basic, in IBM terminology, indicates a lower-level access method that deals with data sets in terms of physical blocks and does not provide either read-ahead, called anticipatory buffering, or synchronization — that is, the user program has to explicitly wait for completion of each input/output event.
With BDAM, "the programmer can directly store and retrieve a block by specifying either its actual device address, its relative position within a data set (relative block number), or the relative track within a data set at which the system is to begin a search.
BDAM provides no index or structure to the file except as programmed by the application. In many applications, a hashing or randomizing function may be used to assign the block address based on a key in the data. If physical keys are used, the key of the last record within the block must be written as the key for that block.
The BDAM application program interface can be compared with the interface offered by open, read, write and close calls (using file handles) in other operating systems such as Unix and Windows.
BDAM is still supported by IBM as of 2012. Because of its dependence on physical device geometry new IBM direct-access devices used with z/OS emulate IBM 3390 devices regardless of their real physical characteristics.
Read more about this topic: Basic Direct Access Method
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The great object in life is Sensationto feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this craving void which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (17881824)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (17431826)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)