CICS container-based event (CCE) format

The CICS® container-based event (CCE) format is based on a CICS channel with containers providing the event name and details, standard contextual information, and the event-specific data items. The CCE format can be used to extend application behavior in an event-driven way by driving a new CICS transaction, which uses the information passed to it in the container-based event format.

You specify the event format you want to use by using the event binding editor. For more information about adapter properties and supported formats, see Specifying EP adapter and dispatcher information in the CICS Explorer product documentation.

The CCE format is used to pass the event data to a CICS program. The formatted data is placed in containers in a channel named DFHEP.EVENT.

Some context information for correlation is placed in the container named DFHEP.CCECONTEXT. For more information, see Table 1.

The name of each data item is placed in containers named DFHEP.NAME.nnnnn, where nnnnn is an ascending number starting with 00001.

The formatted data is in containers named DFHEP.DATA.nnnnn, where nnnnn is an ascending number starting with 00001. This number correlates the name of the data item to the formatted data.

The DFHEP.CCECONTEXT container contains the formatted event context information, which can be mapped by using the EPFEContextEntry structure.

Table 1. EPFEContextEntry structures
Name Language Library
DFHEPFED Assembler SDFHMAC
DFHEPFEH C/C++ SDFHC370
DFHEPFEL PL/I SDFHPL1
DFHEPFEO COBOL SDFHCOB
The copybooks providing these mappings can be found here:
  • hlq.SDFHMAC
  • hlq.SDFHC370
  • hlq.SDFHPL1
  • hlq.SDFHCOB
The EPFE structure consists of contextual data associated with the event which includes:
  • The event context identifier.
  • The event context version.
  • The event context event binding name.
  • The event binding user tag.
  • The event business name.
  • The network unit of work ID1.
  • The network qualified applid.
  • The capture date and time2.
  • The capture specification name.
  • The item count3.
Note:

1 The network unit of work ID is set to binary zeros (NULL) for all system and policy events.

2 All events are emitted with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) timestamps in RFC3339 format.

3 The number of DFHEP.NAME.nnnnn and DFHEP.DATA.nnnnn containers.