Program-to-program communication typically involves a variety of computer systems and languages. Because each system or language has its own way of representing equivalent data, data conversion support is needed for the application program to overcome the differences in data representations from different environments.
With the Convert_Incoming and Convert_Outgoing calls, CPI Communications provides limited data conversion for character data in the user buffer. These calls may be used to write a program that is independent of the partner program's local character set:
These two calls provide limited data conversion support for character data that belongs to character set 00640, as specified in Appendix A. "Variables and Characteristics". See the usage notes under Convert_Incoming (CMCNVI) and Convert_Outgoing (CMCNVO).
With the Send_Mapped_Data, Receive_Mapped_Data, Set_Mapped_Initialization_Data, and Extract_Mapped_Initialization_Data calls, CPI-C provides access to sophisticated routines for conversion of data in the user buffer before it is sent or received. These routines may be used to write programs that are independent of encoding of the partner program. This allows the encode/decode routine to change the order of the fields, selectively receive fields, and supply missing fields when sending.
These calls should not be used when using the OSI Unstructured Data Transfer U-ASE or CPI-C 1.0 mapped conversations. If you desire to use these calls for uniformity with other programs the MAP_NAME should be set to blanks and/or MAP_NAME_LENGTH set to zero.