Service programs

A service program is a collection of runnable procedures and available data items easily and directly accessible by other ILE programs or service programs. Service programs are a means of packaging callable routines (functions or procedures) into a separately bound program and provides modularity and improves maintainability. You can use off-the-shelf modules developed by third parties or package your own modules for third-party use. Service programs are created by a compiler option that includes the Create Service Program (CRTSRVPGM) command.

Service programs provide common services that other ILE objects may need; hence the name service program. An example of a set of service programs provided by IBM i are the run-time procedures for a language. These run-time procedures often include such items as mathematical procedures and common input/output procedures.

A service program differs from a program in several ways: