Developing COBOL programs for CICS

You can write CICS applications in COBOL and run them on the AIX workstation using TXSeries.

To prepare COBOL applications to run under CICS, do these steps:

  1. Ensure that your CICS administrator modified the region's environment file to set the environment variables COBPATH and LIBPATH to include the runtime directory. Also, ensure that the CICS region was granted access to the runtime directory.

    The environment file is /var/cics_regions/xxxxxxxx/environment (where xxxxxxxx is the name of the region).

  2. Create the application by using an editor to do the following tasks:
    • Code your program using COBOL statements and CICS commands.
    • Create COBOL copybooks.
    • Create the CICS screen maps that your program uses.
  3. Use the command cicsmap to process the screen maps.
  4. Use one of the forms of the cicstcl command to translate the CICS commands and to compile and link the program:
    • cicstcl -p to use the integrated CICS translator
    • cicstcl without the -p flag to use the separate CICS translator
  5. Define the resources for your application, such as transactions, application programs, and files, to the CICS region. CICS administrator authority is required to perform these actions.
  6. Access the CICS region, for example by using the cicsterm command.
  7. Run the application by entering the four-character transaction ID that is associated with the application.

related concepts  
Integrated CICS translator