Conversation termination

A conversation can be terminated by either the application program or the terminal operator.

An application program terminates a conversation by inserting a message to the input terminal with a SPA that contains either blanks as the transaction code or the transaction code of a nonconversational transaction.

A conversational transaction can also be terminated by the /EXIT command.

An IMS shutdown does not terminate conversations. The conversation is continued after IMS restarts, unless an IMS cold start occurs or the conversation is terminated by an operator command such as /EXIT. If the input system is shut down and subsequently cold starts, all the conversations that it controls are lost. If using Resource Manager (RM) and the status recovery mode is GLOBAL, an IMS conversation can survive an IMS cold start because the status is stored in RM. The input system cancels any conversational messages it receives for input terminals that were previously involved in active or held conversations. IMS retains conversations over a restart. An IMS cold start is an unusual procedure, and can cause many problems beyond losing conversation state.

If a remote system is shut down when a conversational step is processing or in its queue, and it is subsequently cold started, all references to the conversation are lost. A conversation that is lost in this way must be specifically canceled in the input system by the /EXIT command.