System-wide storage areas

For each CICS® region, your installation can choose between user-key and CICS-key storage for the common work area (CWA) and for the terminal control table user areas (TCTUAs).

If these areas are in user-key storage, all programs have read-write access to them. If these areas are in CICS-key storage, user-key application programs are restricted to read-only access. The storage keys for the CWA and the TCTUAs are set by the system initialization parameters CWAKEY and TCTUAKEY, respectively. In both cases the default option is that CICS obtains user-key storage.