The RELEASE function can remove connections established through the GET and GET_ALL functions. The caller must specify the same DCB which was passed to DESERV to establish the connections. The connections established by the BLDL, FIND, or POINT macro are unaffected.

The caller can specify which connections are to be removed in one of two ways, either a connect id or a list of SMDEs by supplying. The function removes all connects from a single request of the GET or GETALL functions if the caller passes a connect identifier. Alternatively, if provided with a list of SMDEs, the function removes the connections associated with the versions of the member names in the SMDEs.

Recommendation: The SMDEs as returned by GET and GETALL contain control information used to identify the connection. Do not modify this information before issuing the RELEASE function.

If all connections of a connect identifier are released based on SMDEs, the connect identifier is not freed or reclaimed. Only release by connect identifier will cause DE services to reclaim the connect id for future use. It is not an error to include SMDEs for PDS data sets even though connections can't be established. It is an error to release an used connect identifier. It is also an error to release a PDSE SMDE for which there is no connection.

The DE services user does not need to issue the RELEASE function to release connections as all connections not explicitly released can be released by closing the DCB. See Figure 1 for an overview of control blocks related to the RELEASE function.

Figure 1. DESERV RELEASE Input Control Block Structure