Intercommunication facilities
In a multiple-system environment, each participating system can have its own local terminals and databases, and can run its local application programs independently of other systems in the network.
A participating system can also establish links to other systems, and gain access to remote resources. This mechanism allows resources to be distributed among and shared by the participating systems.
CICS® provides the following
types of facilities for communicating with other CICS, IMS,
or other systems:
- Function shipping
- Asynchronous processing
- Transaction routing
- Distributed program link (DPL)
- Distributed transaction processing (DTP)
For more information about the intercommunication facilities that support access to CICS programs and transactions from non-CICS environments, see Interfaces to CICS transactions and programs and Internet, TCP/IP, and HTTP concepts .
These communication facilities are not all available for all forms
of intercommunication. The circumstances under which they can be used
are shown in Table 1.
IRC
Interregion communication |
Intersystem
communication over TCP/IP |
Intersystem communication
over SNA (using ACF/ z/OS® Communications Server) |
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
MRO
|
IPIC
|
LUTYPE6.2 (APPC)
|
LUTYPE6.1
|
||||
Facility | CICS
|
CICS
|
non-CICS
(for example, CICS TG) |
CICS
|
non-CICS
(for example, CICS TG) |
CICS
|
IMS
|
Function
Shipping |
Yes
|
Yes
(See note) |
No
|
Yes
|
No
|
Yes
|
No
|
Asynchronous
Processing |
Yes
|
Yes
(See note) |
No
|
Yes
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Transaction
Routing |
Yes
|
Yes
(See note) |
Yes
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
Distributed
program link |
Yes
|
Yes
(See note) |
Yes
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
Distributed
transaction processing |
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Notes:
- IPIC supports function shipping of all file control, transient data, and temporary storage requests between CICS TS 4.2 or later regions.
- IPIC supports asynchronous processing of EXEC CICS START, START CHANNEL, and CANCEL commands, between CICS TS 4.1, or later regions.
- IPIC supports transaction routing of 3270 terminals between CICS TS 4.1 or later regions, where the terminal-owning region (TOR) is uniquely identified by an APPLID. Enhanced routing of transactions invoked by terminal-oriented START commands is supported between CICS TS 4.2 or later regions.
- IPIC supports the following DPL calls:
- Distributed program link (DPL) calls between CICS TS 3.2 or later regions.
- Distributed program link (DPL) calls between CICS TS and TXSeries® Version 7.1 or later.