The database may allocate a Move area. It is similar to the response buffer but only needs to contain room for one parcel at a time.
If the database has allocated a Move area, when the application program sends in a request, it may specify in the DBCAREA that the Move area is to be used. In that case, each time DBCHCL is called for the Fetch function, DBCHCL moves the next parcel, which is the one the database is about to use, into the Move area instead of making the parcel available in the response buffer.
In some application languages, such as COBOL which does not support pointers, having the next parcel separate is critical and easily worth the small use of space for the Move area and the small loss of time for DBCHCL to do the copy.
In other application languages, such as C, PL/1, and IBM Assembler, reading the parcel directly from the response buffer is no problem; but using a Move area may have an advantage such as providing word alignment for the start of the Move area. Move Mode is primarily for use in languages that do not support pointer operations.