The ATTRIBUTES option

The specifics of the resource definition that a CREATE or a CSD command installs are conveyed through the ATTRIBUTES option value, which is a character string listing the attributes of the resource.

You specify attributes and attribute values in text form, in the same way that you do on a CEDA DEFINE screen. This character string is analyzed at the time the CREATE or CSD command is executed, and consequently must consist entirely of text, rather than variable names, in a single string. The syntax in the string is provided for each CREATE or CSD command, using the same conventions as command syntax, except for the attribute values as noted below. However, the contents are not parsed by the translator, which checks only the command syntax, shown in the main diagram.

Attribute values appear essentially as they do on CEDA DEFINE screens. However, because DEFINE screens are preformatted and ATTRIBUTES strings are not, you need to know the following rules:
  • Attributes may appear in any order (you do not have to follow the order in the syntax diagram or in the CEDA command).
  • The name of an attribute must be that shown in the syntax diagram or the abbreviation permitted in the corresponding CEDA DEFINE entry (see the discussion of DEFINE in ).
    Note: Abbreviations can change from release to release, and thus full spellings are safest.
  • The attribute string is not converted to uppercase, in contrast to inputs to CEDA and the DFHCSDUP utility. Attribute names are recognized regardless whether you use upper, lower, or mixed case, as are value names assigned by CICS (those shown in uppercase letters in the syntax diagram). However, other character values—resource names and message text, for example—are taken as is, so that you need to supply them in the intended case.
  • The argument value, if any, must follow the rules for the same attribute in a CEDA DEFINE panel. Where there are a limited number of possible values, they are listed in the attributes diagram in uppercase. Otherwise the diagram indicates only the form of the value, using the following conventions:
    charn
    A character string of length n or, where the argument can be of variable length, of maximum length n.
    hexn
    A string of hexadecimal characters of length n or, where the argument can be of variable length, of maximum length n.
    n1-n2
    A number in the range n1 to n2.
    Note: You can omit trailing blanks in character arguments, trailing X'00's in hexadecimal arguments, and leading zeros in numeric arguments.
  • You can use one or more blanks to separate attributes for readability, but a blank is required only between an attribute that has no argument and the next attribute. Commas and other separators are not allowed. Blanks may also appear between an attribute name and the parentheses that surround its argument, and between the parentheses and the argument value, but they are not necessary. Thus both of these, and similar combinations, are correct: 
        ATTRIBUTES ( ‘UCTRAN (NO)RTIMEOUT (10 )’)
    ATTRIBUTES(‘ UCTRAN(NO)   RTIMEOUT( 10) ’ )
  • No quote marks are required within the attribute string (you need them around the whole string if you use a literal, as in the example above). If you want quotes within your text—in the DESCRIPTION attribute, for example—use two quote characters for each one that you want to appear in the text, as you do in literal constants that contain quotes.
  • Very few attributes require specification, and omitting one is equivalent to not keying a value for it on a CEDA screen. Where the default value is always the same, it is shown in the diagram in the same way as in syntax diagrams. However, some defaults depend on the values of other attributes, and these are not shown. (You cannot define your own defaults for CREATE commands because they do not use the CSD file.)
  • For some resource types, you can use defaults for all attributes. If you want to do this, set the length of the string to zero in the ATTRLEN option. You must still specify the ATTRIBUTES option in this case, even though the data-value you provide is not examined.
  • You can omit the ATTRLEN option when it is not zero if it is the length of the variable specified in ATTRIBUTES and you are not coding in C/370, as explained in Argument lengths.

If you make an error in the ATTRIBUTES string, CICS raises the INVREQ condition with an appropriate RESP2 value. RESP2 values for EXEC CICS CREATE and EXEC CICS CSD commands lists the RESP2 values that apply.