CICS services for application programs

CICS® provides a number of services that enable you to construct business-critical applications.

Understanding file control
CICS data management services have traditionally been known as CICS file control. CICS file control offers you access to data sets that are managed by either the Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) or the basic direct-access method (BDAM).
Terminal control
The CICS application programming interface contains two sets of commands for communicating with terminals, Terminal control commands and Basic Mapping Support (BMS).
Interval control
The CICS interval control services provide functions that are related to time.
Task control
The CICS task control facility provides functions that synchronize task activity, or that control the use of resources.
CICS storage protection and transaction isolation
Storage control is affected by storage protection and transaction isolation. Storage protection protects CICS code and control blocks from applications, and transaction isolation protects tasks from each other.
Transient data control
The CICS transient data control facility provides a generalized queuing facility. Data can be queued (stored) for subsequent internal or external processing. Selected data, specified in the application program, can be routed to or from predefined symbolic intrapartition or extrapartition transient data queues.
Temporary storage control
The CICS temporary storage control facility provides the application programmer with the ability to store data in temporary storage queues, either in main storage, in auxiliary storage on a direct-access storage device, or in a temporary storage data sharing pool. Data stored in a temporary storage queue is known as temporary data.
CICS documents and document templates
Application programs can create documents and place data into them using commands in the EXEC CICS DOCUMENT application programming interface. Document templates are portions of a document which can be created offline, or in another CICS program, and used by the application program to create the document.
Setting up document templates
Document templates are CICS resources, which you define using DOCTEMPLATE resource definitions.
Programming with documents and document templates
This section explains how to use documents and document templates in your application programs.
Named counter servers
CICS provides a facility for generating unique sequence numbers for use by application programs in a Parallel Sysplex® environment. This facility is controlled by a named counter server, which maintains each sequence of numbers as a named counter.
Printing and spool files
CICS does not provide special commands for printing, but there are options on BMS and terminal control commands that apply only to printers, and for some printers you use transient data or SPOOL commands.
Basic mapping support
Basic mapping support (BMS) is an application programming interface between CICS programs and terminal devices.

Parent topic: Designing applications