Administering with CICS supplied transactions

CICS provides operations, usually initiated from terminals, called transactions, each of which involves the use of CICS tables, programs, and internal services. The following sections describe the transactions that are supplied by CICS and that have an operator interface.

CICS transactions have identification codes that start with “C” and are 4 characters long; for example, CEMT. For a complete list of CICS transactions, including those that do not have an operator interface, see the List of CICS transactions.

In general, you start a CICS transaction by entering its transaction identifier; for example, CEMT. The transaction identifier is used by CICS to identify the programs that handle the specified transactions, and to establish a task to process them.

If you use an IBM 3270 system display or similar display device that has the appropriate features installed, you can also start a transaction by a program function (PF) key or program attention (PA) key, by an operator identification card reader, by a magnetic slot reader, or by a light pen.

You might want to apply a CICS-supplied upgrade, but are using modified versions of one or more CICS-supplied transactions or of the CICS-supplied calling programs that handle CICS-supplied transactions. After you have first copied them to differently named groups, you must replace these private versions from the upgraded CICS-supplied version and modify them afresh to ensure that the necessary upgrade changes are carried out. Failure to do this can lead to unpredictable results.