SDDS_table: Address of the SDDS_TABLE structure for the data set.
column_name: A NULL-terminated character string giving the name of the column of
data to retrieve.
dimension1, dimension2: The desired dimensions of the array, the product of which
must equal the number of rows in the column. These dimensions are typically stored in
parameters of the data table.
mode: One
of the constants SDDS_ROW_MAJOR_DATA and SDDS_COLUMN_MAJOR_DATA,
defined in SDDS.h. These indicate that the items in the column should be considered to
be given in row-major or column-major order, respectively.
return value: On success, returns a pointer to the array, which has type data-type**, where data-type is the data
type of the column. The array is newly-allocated, and may be modified as needed by the caller. Note
that for type SDDS_STRING, data-type is char **.
On failure, returns NULL and records an error message