Connecting to CICS Applications

If you are using the CICS client, you must compile your ACUCOBOL-GT application with the "-Dw32" and "-Da4" options. These are data format switches. The runtime does not require any special switches to use the IBM library routines or COPY files once you have compiled with the correct options. You must also set the USE_CICS runtime configuration variable to a value of "1".

Note: Compiling with any other "-D" flags could cause problems in compilation, so use them with caution.

ACUCOBOL-GT supports the External Call Interface (ECI) portion of CICS. The ECI allows a non-CICS application to call a CICS program that resides on a CICS server. The non-CICS application does not issue any CICS commands itself; these commands are issued by the called program running on the server. The call is no different from any other call built into a library or COBOL program. The CICSEXTERNALCALL ECI call can be used to:

Call programs (synchronously or asynchronously).
Request STATE information (synchronously or asynchronously).
Check on previous asynchronous calls using a number of GET REPLY options.

ACUCOBOL-GT also supports the CICSECILISTSYSTEMS call, which is used to determine the servers available to receive CICSEXTERNALCALL requests.