Containers and Processes

Substation ES supports two CICS container types: multiple containers and a single container. All containers within UoW are transmitted over a single channel.

The value of the following fields relating to containers can be updated in the CICS panel of a recipe under Container Extended Options:

  • Channel Name: you can use the field to specify the channel name that you want Substation ES to use during the CICS process. If present, this field overrides the channel default name of SXCOSRVGCHANNEL for all container processes.
  • Single CTN Name: you can use the field to specify the container name that you want Substation ES to use during the CICS single container invocation process. If present, this field overrides that setting for all CICS single Container processes using the recipe.
  • Container Invocation: you can use the field to specify the method of container invocation. You can either link to a program or start a transaction in a CICS region.
  • Container Process: you can use the field to specify the type of container to be used. This can be a single container, or multiple containers driven by message fields. The number of containers is determined by message fields.
  • FWD Destination Names: you can use the field to send the destination and subject name to CICS. If this parameter is enabled and the process has multiple containers without conversion rules, then Substation creates two additional containers named tibss-ListenTo and tibss-ReplyTo and sends them to CICS. These containers contain the corresponding destination or subject names of this service.

You can also use the MOI 10 recipe resource invocation to specify whether the CICS resource invoked has to be a program or a transaction. When selecting a transaction invocation, no response to the calling program is possible and you must specify 0 or 1 for Reply Method, where 0 indicates no reply and 1 indicates a status only reply.

  • Multiple Containers
    With the multi-container support process, you can add multiple containers to a single resource with one call, when invoking CICS resources using containers.
  • Single Containers
    Substation ES supports single container input and output from a program. The input and output containers have the same name as the program to be called, while the default channel name used is SXCOSRVGCHANNEL.