The CICS XML assistant

The CICS® XML assistant is a set of batch utilities that can help you to transform XML into high-level language structures and vice versa. The assistant supports rapid deployment of applications that perform XML processing with the minimum amount of programming effort.

Using the XML assistant for CICS reduces the amount of code that you must write to parse or construct XML; CICS transforms data between XML fragments and the data structure of an application program.

The XML assistant can create an XML schema from a simple language structure, or a language structure from an existing XML schema, and supports COBOL, C/C++, and PL/I. It also generates metadata that CICS uses at run time to automatically convert XML data to binary application data or vice versa; the metadata is defined in an XML binding and stored on z/OS UNIX. The schema for the XML binding is in /usr/lpp/cicsts/cicsts52/schemas/xmltransform/ directory on z/OS UNIX.

The CICS XML assistant comprises two utility programs:

DFHLS2SC: This utility generates an XML schema and binding from a language structure.
DFHSC2LS: This utility generates an XML binding and language structure that you can use in your application programs. You can use either a WSDL document or an XML schema as input.

The JCL procedures to run both programs are in the hlq.XDFHINST library, where hlq is the high-level qualifier of your CICS installation.