The bridge facility

The 3270 user application was designed to be used with a real 3270 terminal and the CICS® commands that it uses assume that a real 3270 exists.

The 3270 bridge mechanism simulates the presence of a real 3270 by providing internal interfaces for a virtual 3270, known as the bridge facility.

This replaces the terminal resource definition that you would normally provide for a 3270 application. The bridge facility emulates a real terminal in the following EXEC CICS interfaces:

ASSIGN
Terminal control and some of the BMS API
EIB
INQUIRE TASK
INQUIRE TERMINAL

You do not provide a resource definition for the bridge facility, but you can control some of the terminal properties used by providing a 3270 TERMINAL resource definition to be used as a template. The name of this TERMINAL definition, known as the facilitylike , is passed to the bridge on the Link3270 call.

See Defining the bridge facility for further information about the bridge facility.