CICS Program Compilations under TS

CICS Transaction Server includes an ‘integrated translator component’. This means that you can compile programs to be used under CICS using a single job step no more CICS Translate Step.

The CICS Translate step was required to translate any EXEC CICS commands into something that the language compiler could understand, in COBOL for example EXEC CICS commands were converted into CALLs. Once the translator had completed the generated code was passed to the compiler and finally the compiled code was passed to the link editor.

For DB2 CICS Programs you would have to feed the source code firstly to the DB2 Preprocessor, then through the CICS translator, and then that would go to the compile and link edit steps.

 The integrated translator in CICS TS combines the translate and compile into one. The integrated translator can handle CICS API commands, CICS SPI (System Programming Interface) commands, CICSPlex SM API commands and DL/I EXEC DLI commands. DB2 commands (EXEC SQL) are translated using the ‘SQL integrated coprocessor’.

You now only need two steps in your job, the Compile and the Link Edit.

All the diagnostic messages will now appear in the one listing, And the compiler statement numbers will be the same as they are in the original source code.

The combining of the translator and compiler now means it is possible to have CICS and DB2 commands inside copybooks. Previously the copybooks were not expanded until the compile step, so any CICS or DB2 Commands in a copybook would be missed by the translate and preprocessor phases.

 Another feature of using the integrated translator is that when you CALL another program you no longer have to pass DFHEIBLK and DFHCOMMAREA as arguments. These two areas are defined as GLOBAL in the outermost program and so are available to any called programs.

An important change has taken place with the Execute Interface Block (DFHEIBLK) definitions. All binary (COMP) fields are now defined as COMP-5. This means that they are unaffected by what you specify in the TRUNC compiler option, which has been the source of some problems in the past.

For more information visit http://www.ibm.com/software/ts/cics/v2
IBM Document, ‘Application development improvements with CICS TS Version 2.2’