STATE

The STATE option is available on advanced program-to-program communications (APPC) commands such as ALLOCATE and CONNECT PROCESS. APPC commands allow a CICS® program to send data to, and receive data from, another program that is running in a remote system. The programs are linked together by using a conversation. Only one program can send data at a time, although each program can have a chance to send while the conversation is active. The rules that control when each program can send data are expressed in terms of a conversation state.

The conversation state is a local attribute of the conversation. It changes its value depending on the APPC commands that the local program issues, and as a result of data and other status information that is received from the remote program.

A local program can query the conversation state by using either the STATE option on an APPC command, or the EXTRACT ATTRIBUTES command. The conversation state is returned as one of the following CVDA values:
  • ALLOCATED
  • CONFFREE
  • CONFRECEIVE
  • CONFSEND
  • FREE
  • PENDFREE
  • PENDRECEIVE
  • RECEIVE
  • ROLLBACK
  • SEND
  • SYNCFREE
  • SYNCRECEIVE
  • SYNCSEND

Conversation states and when they occur in the conversation are defined in Conversation states. It also defines which APPC commands are permitted in each conversation state.

CICS-value data areas (CVDA) describes how to use CVDA values.

Programming that uses APPC conversations is called Distributed Transaction Processing (DTP). For guidance on using APPC conversations, see Summary of CICS commands for APPC mapped conversations.