Connecting to CICS Applications

If you are using the CICS client, you must compile your ACUCOBOL-GT application with the "-Dw32" and "-Da1" options. These are data format switches. The runtime will not require any special switches to use the IBM library routines or copybooks once you have compiled with the correct options.

Note: Use caution when compiling with any other "-D" flags because this could cause problems in compilation.

We support 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 in the server. The call is no different from any other call built into a library or COBOL program. This ECI call, "CICSEXTERNALCALL", 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

Note that the COMMAREA option in IBM COBOL is synonymous with the Linkage section.

We also support the "CICSECILISTSYTEMS" call, which checks your local configuration file for CICS configuration entries.