How CICS supports event processing

CICS® supports the production of events from applications, when certain EXEC CICS commands are run, or when certain system conditions occur. For example, when a file status changes or an unhandled transaction abend occurs. These events can be consumed by a variety of event consumers.

CICS event processing workflow

CICS event processing supports a flow of work between four classes of user.

The business management user: Understands the needs of the business, but does not necessarily know about the programs and computer systems that support that business. This user uses a new CICS tool to express business needs in high-level terms. For example, an online camera retail business need might be: I need marketing to be notified of every order for a telescope that exceeds £2000. This need might exist so that the customer can be targeted with offers for high-specification digital cameras.
The application analyst or programmer: Understands, or can investigate, how an existing application was designed. The application analyst or programmer can identify which part of an application must be extended to meet the needs of the business manager. In the previous example, the application analyst or programmer must know which part of a program detects orders for telescopes, where to find the value of any such order, and where to find any other data that might be useful in satisfying the business need.
The CICS system programmer: Understands how programs interact with CICS, and can help the application analyst or programmer to deploy the new event processing resources. The system programmer can define business events to monitor the system and its applications. The system programmer can also diagnose and debug problems related to the application and its events.
The IT architect: Understands event processing in a CICS system and the benefits, requirements, and costs of using assured event emission. The IT architect is aware of the need for application users to have authority to write to the event emission recoverable transport or resource. The IT architect also understands the different combinations of emission mode (synchronous), transaction mode, and recoverable transport with regards to the EP adapter.

In your organization, some or all of these classes of user might be combined in one person. The tool used by all the users is the CICS event binding editor, which is part of the CICS Explorer®. It is designed so that the different classes of user can work as a team to implement event processing.

Using the CICS event binding editor in the CICS Explorer you specify what events you want CICS to emit. The event binding contains:

event specifications which describe the data to be included in an event
capture specifications which define the conditions under which an event is to be captured and map the captured data to the event specification
adapter information which defines how the event is to be formatted and emitted