IBM Mainframe Forum

Hi,
What are the different ways in which we can call a program from CICS program other than the ones mentioned below:

XCTL
LINK
Mentioning the transaction ID in return command.

start, return

You can also use the language CALL statement.

c62ap90,

Those 2 methods were mentioned in the original post. OP wants OTHER ways of calling a program.

Hey NicC...

I just posted the "full" EXEC in case others want to learn from the format since this is a forum for learning. It will help in future searches too.

If you think it will not be helpful to anyone, then delete my posts! Thanks.

TDQ program name to run when records show up in the queue
Batch program starting transaction
(never did it, but does CICS have something like IMS's BMP?)

Hi,

CICS allows you to write foreground as well as background tasks.

Foreground Programs
In an application, there are a number of options like Inquiry/Add/Update/Delete screens under one facility/main menu. In CICS, you'd XCTL from the Main-Menu program to the Inquiry/Add/Update/Delete programs.

If you had to invoke a sub-program, the caller wants the control back, you LINK PROGRAM(WS-SUB-PROGRAM) and RETURN. Now, lots of CICS screens have date fields. The date entered has got to be a valid date. So, a CICS application may LINK to the date-validation program, every-time a date check is required. The date routine is just a helper module and the main program expects the control back, so it makes sense to LINK to it.

START'ed tasks
When a CICS transaction does typical batch-style processing of big amounts of data, you create it as a CICS background task(instead of a foreground). CICS runs background tasks at a lower-priority. CICS background tasks are always START'ed.

Thanks.
Quasar