Defining remote files

A remote file is a file that resides on another CICS system.

CICS file control requests that are made against a remote file are shipped to the remote system by means of CICS function shipping.

Applications can be designed to access files without being aware of their location. To support this facility, the remote file must be defined (with the REMOTESYSTEM option) in the local system.

Alternatively, CICS application programs can name a remote system explicitly on file control requests, by means of the SYSID option. If this is done, there is no need for the remote file to be defined on the local CICS system.

The following attributes provide CICS with sufficient information to enable it to ship file control requests to a specified remote system.

FILE(name)
REMOTESYSTEM(name)
REMOTENAME(name)
RECORDSIZE(record-size)
KEYLENGTH(key-length)

Although MRO is supported for both user-maintained and CICS-maintained remote data tables, CICS does not allow you to define a local data table based on a remote source data set. However, there are ways around this restriction. (See File control.)