If you want to select SMDEs by name, you supply a list of names to be sorted in ascending order, without duplicates. Each name is comprised of a two-byte length field followed by the characters of the name. When searching for names with less than eight characters, the names are padded on the right with blanks to make up eight characters. Names greater than eight characters will have trailing blanks and nulls stripped (to a minimum length of eight) before the search.

In addition to retrieving the SMDE, member level connections can be established for each member name found. The members are connected with the HOLD type connection. A connection type of HOLD ensures that the member cannot be removed from the system until the connection is released. To specify the connection, use the CONN_INTENT=HOLD parameter.

All connections made through a single call to GET are associated with a single unique connect identifier. The connect identifier may be used to release all the connections in a single invocation of the RELEASE function. Figure 1 shows an example of DESERV GET:

Figure 1. DESERV GET by NAME_LIST Control Block Structure