Hello Mark!

Tuesday February 21 1995, Mark Shumway writes to John Poltorak:

 JP>> I have just received the CICS for OS/2 v2.01 evaluation kit, and am

 MS> I'm not familiar with the "evaluation kit" that you mention here,

It only came out a couple of weeks ago and may be only available in the UK...
It's a time limited (90 day) version of the real thing, I believe.

 MS> deleted the sample app as I have no interest in it. For what it's worth,
 MS> we get our copy from Micro Focus, who distribute this IBM software as
 MS> their CICS OS/2 Option (MCO2 for short). It's the full-blown
 MS> development environment supporting C, and PL/I and includes an integrated
 MS> "workbench" for Micro Focus COBOL.  Works great.

Have you any idea how wide is the use of CICS OS/2? Is it mainly used for
developing for a mainframe environment, and is COBOL or PL/I the preferred
language? (I don't expect C to be used much at all, BICBW).

 JP>> If anyone else has been trying it out, maybe you could explain how
 JP>> to
 JP>> load and run the sample programs. I cannot work out how to run the

 MS> I'm surprised that this isn't working right out of the box. As I recall,
 MS> the samples come ready-to-run, and actually provide an installation
 MS> verification of sorts.

Yes - someone pointed this out in IBM's CF.OS2PROD.CICSOS2 forum. I had
overlooked 'The installation verification procedures' section in the
Installation book. I have it working now.

 MS> You need to learn your way around the CEDA transaction, which is the
 MS> on-line interface into the CICS tables, it is somewhat analagous to its'
 MS> mainframe counterpart for RDO, although some of the control tables (such
 MS> as the PPT) are utilized differently in the CICS OS/2 environment than the
 MS> mainframe.

RDO was one of the new features added in v1.7, but I never got a chance to
become familiar with it. I was used to updating tables using a batch
process, which did have advantages in certain circumstances. I don't see
any equivalent batch method for doing this in CICS OS/2.

 MS> I suppose that you could use the CAEX transaction (application
 MS> export), as
 MS> it requires a group name to process.  As I recall, the entire operation is
 MS> logged into the FAACAEX.LOG file located in the DATA subdirectory.  This
 MS> is the main use for group names under CICS OS/2 - a group name defines an
 MS> application, and can be used to transport and install the application from
 MS> one workstation to another. All programs, mapsets, control table entries
 MS> and data files can be exported/imported in a single operation.

How do you go about creating a MAP?  When I worked with CICS for MVS,
almost all development was done using Natural which provided an excellent
mapping facility and I never neede to know anything about BMS.

 MS> Good luck, and have fun!

Thanks, nice to make your acquaintance.

John

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