The answer area mapped by IXCYAMDA can contain one or more instances of many different types of records depending on your IXCMG request. To help you reference each of the record types, the answer area contains fields indicating the length of each record type. For each record type, AMDAREA contains the number of entries in IXCYAMDA, the length of each entry, and the offset to the first entry of the record type. You must use these length fields to index through the answer area in case the length of the record(s) you are requesting ever changes. Using the DSECT length of a particular record type is not recommended because the length might have been changed since your program was assembled.