The CICS-WebSphere MQ trigger monitor

CKTI is the CICS-supplied trigger monitor (or task initiator), used in a CICS® environment to start a transaction when the trigger conditions on any of its associated queues are met. CKTI provides the ability to track transactions initiated by the MQ Trigger monitor. The benefit of this feature provides administrators with the ability to visualize and track work, therefore offering further value.

To a queue manager, a trigger monitor is like any other application that serves a queue. However, a trigger monitor serves initiation queues.

A trigger monitor is usually a continuously running program. When a trigger message arrives on an initiation queue, the trigger monitor retrieves that message. It uses information in the message to issue a command to start the application that is to process the messages on the application queue.

The trigger monitor must pass sufficient information to the program that it is starting so that the program can perform the right actions on the right application queue. CKTI is the CICS-WebSphere MQ trigger monitor.

CKTI

You start one instance of CKTI for each initiation queue. CKTI passes the MQTM structure of the trigger message to the program that it starts by EXEC CICS START TRANSID. The started program obtains this information by using the EXEC CICS RETRIEVE command. For more information about the MQTM structure, see MQTM trigger message in the WebSphere MQ product documentation.

A program can use the EXEC CICS RETRIEVE command with the RTRANSID option to determine how the program was started; if the value returned is CKTI, the program was started by the CICS-WebSphere MQ trigger monitor.

For an example of how to use CKTI, see the source code supplied for module CSQ4CVB2 in the Credit Check sample application that is supplied with WebSphere® MQ for z/OS®. For more information about this sample, see Credit check sample in the WebSphere MQ product documentation.