Interfaces to CICS transactions and programs
This information describes sources of external requests, and the routes that they can use into CICS®.
- IBM® MQ users
- IBM MQ users can use the CICS 3270 bridge to access CICS transactions. See Introduction to the 3270 bridge and About the CICS-WebSphere MQ bridge.
- MVS applications
- Applications running in MVS address spaces can use the External CICS Interface (EXCI) to access CICS programs. For more information see Introduction to the external CICS interface.
- ONC RPC clients
- ONC RPC clients can use CICS ONC RPC support to access CICS programs.
The following types of external requests are described in other
books:
- User socket applications
- User socket applications can use the CICS Sockets feature of CICS Transaction Server. For more information, see z/OS Communications Server: IP Configuration Guide.
- Web browsers
- Web browsers can use a number of access methods:
- CICS web support
- The CICS support for web browsers. For more information see the CICS web support concepts and structure
- IBM WebSphere®
- The IBM WebSphere Application Server for z/OS® is an MVS application that supports web browsers and routes their requests into CICS.
- CICS Transaction Gateway
- CICS Transaction Gateway is a Gateway component that can accept requests from client applications and route them into CICS. It uses the EXCI, IPIC, or APPC interconnectivity protocols to access CICS.
- Java™-enabled web browsers
- Java-enabled web browsers can use applets that communicate with CICS. Writers of applets can use Java classes provided with CICS to construct external call interface (ECI) and external presentation interface (EPI) requests. The web browsers communicate with web servers, and with the CICS Transaction Gateway.
- CICS client applications
- CICS client applications can run on a wide variety of client operating systems and interface with CICS applications using the ECI, EPI, or ESI interfaces provided by CICS Transaction Gateway. For more information see CICS Transaction Gateway Programming Guide.
- CICS programs
- Programs running in CICS servers on any platform can use EXEC CICS LINK to call a CICS program, or can use transaction routing to send transaction requests to CICS Transaction Server. Programs running in CICS Transaction Server can use the CICS front-end programming interface (FEPI) to start transactions in the same or another instance of CICS Transaction Server. For more information see Introduction to FEPI.
- Telnet clients
- Telnet clients can use TN3270 to start transactions.
- 3270 users
- Users of the IBM 3270 Display System can start transactions. This mechanism is the most familiar method of introducing work to CICS Transaction Server.
For further information on connectivity options see IBM Redbooks: CICS and SOA: Architecture and Integration Choices.