CICS® supports the
production of events from applications,
when certain EXEC CICS commands
are run, or when certain system conditions occur. For example, when
a file status changes or an unhandled transaction abend occurs. These
events can be consumed by a variety of event consumers.
CICS event
processing workflow
CICS event
processing supports a flow of work between four classes of user.
- The business management user
- Understands the needs of the business, but does not necessarily
know about the programs and computer systems that support that business.
This user uses a new CICS tool
to express business needs in high-level terms. For example, an online
camera retail business need might be: "I need marketing to be notified
of every order for a telescope that exceeds £2000." This need might
exist so that the customer can be targeted with offers for high-specification
digital cameras.
- The application analyst or programmer
- Understands, or can investigate, how an existing application was
designed. The application analyst or programmer can identify which
part of an application must be extended to meet the needs of the business
manager. In the previous example, the application analyst or programmer
must know which part of a program detects orders for telescopes, where
to find the value of any such order, and where to find any other data
that might be useful in satisfying the business need.
- The CICS system programmer
- Understands how programs interact with CICS, and can help the application analyst or
programmer to deploy the new event processing resources. The system
programmer can define business events to monitor the system and its
applications. The system programmer can also diagnose and debug problems
related to the application and its events.
- The IT architect
- Understands event processing in a CICS system
and the benefits, requirements, and costs of using assured event emission.
The IT architect is aware of the need for application users to have
authority to write to the event emission recoverable transport or
resource. The IT architect also understands the different combinations
of emission mode (synchronous), transaction mode, and recoverable
transport with regards to the EP adapter.
In your organization, some or all of these classes
of user might be combined in one person. The tool used by all the
users is the CICS event binding editor, which
is part of the CICS Explorer®.
It is designed so that the different classes of user can work as a
team to implement event processing.
Using the CICS event binding
editor in the CICS Explorer you specify what events you want CICS
to emit. The event binding contains:
- event specifications which describe the data to be included in
an event
- capture specifications which define the conditions under which
an event is to be captured and map the captured data to the event
specification
- adapter information which defines how the event is to be formatted
and emitted