CICS flattened event (CFE) format

You specify the event format you want to use by using the event binding editor. For more information about adapter properties and supported formats, see Specifying EP adapter and dispatcher information in the CICS Explorer product documentation.

The CFE format has a static portion containing context data and a dynamic portion containing the data specific to each event.

The dynamic portion of the event follows EPFE_Context_Data in a section called EPFEEventData. This data is in a non-XML, text-based format. The length and order of each item in the EPFEEventData section is as defined in the event specification. The length and order of the items is specified in the Emitted Business Information section in the event binding editor.

You can use the event binding editor to export a COBOL copybook that describes the EPFEEventData portion of the CFE event. If you have an event binding that was not created by using the event binding editor, you can load it into the event binding editor to export the corresponding copybook, or to get the expected contents of the event from the EventInformationItem details in the event binding.

When a format length is specified as Automatic in the Emitted Business Information table in the event binding editor, this indicates that the length of the emitted business information item is derived from the length and type of the captured field. (When there is more than one capture specification, the first one is used.) This is useful for avoiding the situation where the specified length is too small, which results in the data being truncated or emitted as asterisks.

Another option, the capture length specified for a data item in the capture specification Information Sources, is where a length of 0 means capture up to the end of the data area or container. This is useful when emitting, for example, the contents of a container regardless of its length.

When the event binding editor cannot determine the length required for the emitted business information, an error window opens on the copybook export and a copybook cannot be created. This is the case, for example, when the format length for a CHAR or HEX item is Automatic and the capture length is 0. You should specify a nonzero length for the emitted data item; otherwise, any application that consumes the event needs to know how to interpret the data items. Similarly, when floating point data is formatted as numeric or text, the length of the emitted business information depends on the value of the data field and is not known until run time. You should specify a nonzero length and possibly also a precision value for the emitted business information item.

When null-terminated strings are captured, the formatted event data is not null-terminated, so that the processing program can use the correct function for character arrays that are not null-terminated. The data types in DFHEPDE are CHARZ or HEXZ (rather than CHAR or HEX) so that the EP adapter can create the null-terminated item again, if required.