IBM Mainframe Forum

My group has an interesting task to perform:

The intention is to trap PF1 to run a utility program separate from the existing program, and without interfering with the existing program except that it won't be reciving any input until our new program is done doing what it does. We think we have this figured out since we are currently able to trigger execution without any activity in debug for the underlying program.

This new program then has to, somehow, figure out which screen the underlying program is on, hopefully what field is highlighted, since that's a phase II thing.

Using this data, our new program will reach out to another data source, probably through a CICS web service since we're sharing this database with another application. To get help data for the screen (or the field in phase II).

Then the program will get the data back and display it in a map overlaying the underlying application until the user dismisses it with another keypress.

We have a program in place that performs this type of activity, but it is a third party program and we have no insight into how it accomplishes it.

The thought behind the forum post was that if this program can do it then someone else must have seen how it accomplishes it's task.

We understand that it would be somewhat trivial to accomplish this task directly, except that this would require us to implement the change for every screen and program in the entire CICS implementation, which is quite large, making it a non-trivial and much riskier task, so instead we are attempting to emulate the behavior of this other program, which does it's work without requiring changes to the underlying code.

Thanks,
Jim

Is your help stored in a database of some kind or is it just going to be passed to the program calling the web service?

We do something similar to this to provide error code translation for front ends and code value descriptions for drop down menus by using a CICS web service wrapper subroutine.

Our help is indeed stored in an SQL Server Database, which is intended to be accessed through the web service or other means.

Ok. I want to make sure that I have this. Your help is not stored in a mainframe database, it is stored on a server in SQL Server. You have a program on the mainframe that need to use a web service to query the SQL server database in order to get the help information?

Yes, that's correct, but it's not our major problem. The major problem is getting information about which screen we're on, and which field is highlighted, for use in a program that will be called when a user presses a key, which will be run "fresh" and won't start out "knowing" it.

If the screen name is displayed on the screen is there a way to read that label off the screen?

Sorry, I may have originally mistated our problem. The challenge is to get access to data that we think CICS has(Screen id, field id), but we need to access it from our little triggered application rather than from the main application, because changing the main application involves changes to hundreds of programs.

We do not see accessing the database to retrieve the help data as a challenge.

I take it that your presentation logic and business logic are in one program for the CICS green screen?

Yes, that's correct.

Hmm. you can't call the business logic as a subroutine then since everything is together. (that is how we do it).

At this point I am stumped. And because I am RACF'd out of CEDA and CEMT, I can't research these options further.

I will defer to a systems programmer. If I find anything else, I will let you know.