STARTBROWSE CONTAINER (CHANNEL)

Start a browse of the containers associated with a channel.

STARTBROWSE CONTAINER

Conditions: CHANNELERR

This command is threadsafe.

Description

STARTBROWSE CONTAINER (CHANNEL) initializes a browse token that can be used to identify the name of each data-container associated with a specified channel.

Note: The browse token should be used only by the program that issues the STARTBROWSE command.

If you do not specify the CHANNEL option, CICS® examines the channel of the request. If a current channel exists, its containers are browsed. If no current channel exists, the command is assumed to be a STARTBROWSE CONTAINER (BTS) command.

The order in which containers are returned is undefined and might change. As best practice, applications should not rely on the order of returned containers. If you have existing applications that are written as such, see Upgrading applications for advice. For more best practices on using a channel in applications, see Designing a channel: Best practices.

Options

BROWSETOKEN(data-area): Specifies a fullword binary data area, into which CICS will place the browse token.
CHANNEL(data-value): Specifies the 1– to 16–character name of the channel whose containers are to be browsed. This must be the name of either the current channel or of a channel created by the program that issues the STARTBROWSE CONTAINER command. You can specify the channel name DFHTRANSACTION to use the transaction channel.
If this option is not specified, and the current context is channel, the current channel's containers are browsed.

Conditions

122 CHANNELERR

RESP2 values:

2: The channel specified on the CHANNEL option could not be found.