Overview of CICS interface for stored procedures

With the CICS® interface, stored procedures can open CICS conversations, execute a CICS application program, and update VSAM files.

If you need to create a stored procedure that updates a VSAM file, you might find that CICS has exclusive control of the file and that it cannot be updated from the data server address space. For these situations, and potentially others, facilities are provided that enable you to invoke a CICS application program.

The client application that issued the CALL statement passes a copy of the data to the CICS application program. Like a stored procedure application running within the address space of the data server, the CICS application program can update the values for output and input-output parameters for return to the client application.

Unlike stored procedures running in the address space of the data server, the CICS application program does not have accessibility to an SQLCA structure for error reporting. Instead, it has addressability to an application return code that is returned to the stored procedure application program running in the data server address space and is automatically returned to the client application. If a CICS abend is detected it is sent back to the stored procedure, and by default, to the client application.