Terminology
The following terms are sometimes used without further explanation in the remaining section s of this topic :
- Principal facility
- This term means the terminal or session that is associated with your transaction when the transaction is initiated. CICS® commands, such as SEND or RECEIVE, that do not explicitly name a facility, are taken to refer to the principal facility. Only one principal facility can be owned by a transaction.
- Alternate facility
-
In distributed transaction processing, a transaction can
acquire the use of a session to a remote system. This session is called an alternate facility. It must be named explicitly on CICS commands that refer to it. A transaction can own more than one alternate facility.
Other intersystem sessions, such as those used for function shipping, are not owned by the transaction, and are not regarded as alternate facilities of the transaction.
- Front-end and back-end transactions
-
In distributed transaction processing, a pair of
transactions
converse with one another. The
front-end transaction
is
initiated first, acquires a session to the remote system, and causes
the
back-end transaction
to be initiated.
Note that a transaction can at the same time be the back-end transaction on one conversation and the front-end transaction on one or more other conversations.