Using the routing transaction, CRTE

The routing transaction, CRTE, is a CICS®-supplied transaction used by a terminal operator to call transactions that are owned by a connected CICS system. CRTE facility is particularly useful for testing remote transactions before final installation.

CRTE can be used from any 3270 display device.

To use CRTE, the terminal operator enters: 
  CRTE SYSID=xxxx  [TRPROF={DFHCICSS|profile_name}]
where:
  • xxxx is the name of the CONNECTION or the first four characters of the IPCONN resource that defines the connection to the remote system
  • profile_name is the name of the profile to be used for the session with the remote system
See Defining communication profiles for more information about defining profiles. The transaction then indicates that a routing session has been established, and the user enters input of the form: 
  yyyyzzzzzz...
where yyyy is the name by which the required remote transaction is known on the remote system, and zzzzzz... is the initial input to that transaction. Subsequently, the remote transaction can be used as if it had been defined locally and called in the ordinary way. All further input is directed to the remote system until the operator terminates the routing session by entering CANCEL.

In secure systems, operators are typically required to sign on before they can start transactions. The first transaction that is called in a routing session is therefore usually the sign-on transaction CESN; that is, the operator signs on to the remote system.

Although the routing transaction is implemented as a pseudoconversational transaction, the terminal from which it is called is held by CICS until the routing session ends. Any ATI requests that name the terminal are therefore queued until the CANCEL command is issued.