Essential terms and concepts you need to understand when working with CICS transaction processing systems.
CICS has its own specialized vocabulary that can be overwhelming for newcomers. Understanding these terms is essential for effective communication and system administration. This tutorial covers the fundamental concepts that form the foundation of CICS knowledge.
By the end of this tutorial, you'll understand the core CICS concepts including regions, transactions, programs, tasks, and the different types of conversational processing.
A CICS region is one of the most fundamental concepts in CICS architecture. Think of it as a self-contained environment where CICS runs and processes transactions.
A CICS region is a separate address space that runs CICS and contains all the resources needed for transaction processing. It includes programs, files, terminals, and other resources that work together to process transactions.
A CICS transaction is a unit of work that represents a complete business operation, such as checking an account balance or processing a payment.
Each transaction has a unique transaction ID (TransID) and is processed by CICS programs. Transactions are the fundamental units of work in CICS systems.
Account inquiry transaction
Payment processing transaction
Fund transfer transaction
Menu display transaction
A CICS program is the executable code that processes transactions. Programs contain the business logic and are written in languages like COBOL, PL/I, or Java.
A CICS task is the execution unit that processes a transaction. It represents a single instance of a transaction being processed.
These are two different approaches to handling user interactions in CICS applications.
These terms describe how programs handle multiple concurrent executions.
Can be shared by multiple tasks simultaneously. Most efficient for high-volume applications.
Can be shared but with some limitations. Good balance between efficiency and complexity.
Can only be used by one task at a time. Least efficient but simplest to implement.
Understanding these basic CICS terms is essential for working with CICS systems. These concepts form the foundation for more advanced topics in CICS administration and programming.
In the next tutorials, we'll explore how these concepts work together in CICS architecture and how to apply them in real-world scenarios.