FCT Definition and File Location Overrides

Each FCT has three properties under the category "File Location Overrides", which affect how CICS locates the underlying data file:

• File Name
  • If the filename override is set, CICS uses that as the filename to search for instead of using the FCT name. The filename override can also contain an extension, e.g. "ACCTFIL.DAT".
• File Extension
  • The file extension override allows a file extension to be specified. This is useful for specifying an extension but using the FCT name as the filename.
• Folder location
  • The folder location override affects where CICS looks for the file.

    If the folder location override is set to the absolute path of a disk or database folder, then CICS will only look for the file in that folder and does not use the data file locations.

    The folder override can also be set to a relative path (e.g. "subfolder1/subfolder2/") in which case CICS applies that relative folder to each of the data file locations to locate the file.

Previously, the "Folder" property was named "Path" and it was possible to set it to the full absolute path to the file. This is no longer possible. This field can now only contain a relative or absolute folder.

Any FCTs that made use of the Path property must be modified. For example:

FCT ( Name=fct1 Path="c:\folder\file1.dat" )

should be converted to:

FCT ( Name=fct1 FileName="file1.dat" )

with the data file location "c:\folder\" added to the region startup file.

Previously, for CICS to locate a file in the database, the Format property had to be set to RDBMS and the Path property had to be set to the name of the datastore. This is no longer necessary. Instead, you need to add the datastore folder the file is in either to the data file locations or to the FCT folder override. The RDBMS format value can still be used as a hint to tell CICS if it creates the file (e.g. through CFCR) that it should be created in the database and not on disk.