Configuring the IBM HTTP Server

Note: The functions of the CICS® WebServer plugin are retained for compatibility reasons. You are recommended to use the CICS Transaction Gateway in new applications.
You have to change the configuration information in the IBM® HTTP Server if it is to use the CICS business logic interface to provide its service. z/OS® HTTP Server Planning, Installing, and Using, SC34-4826, gives details of the configuration statements.
You can use the following procedure:
  1. You must set up CICS as follows:
    • Initialize the CICS region with ISC=YES.
    • Install the RDO group DFHWEB.
    • Define a generic connection for EXCI (for example, by installing the sample group DFH$EXCI).
    • Ensure that IRC is open.
  2. Define the CICSTS31.CICS.SDFHDLL1 load library and CICSTS31.CICS.SDFHEXCI to RACF® Program Control. RACF Program control notes the volume serial number of the volume containing the library, and does not allow the use of a different volume. If you later move the load library or the CICSTS31.CICS.SDFHEXCI library to another volume, you must redefine it to RACF Program Control.
  3. Add the CICSTS31.CICS.SDFHDLL1 data set and the CICSTS31.CICS.SDFHEXCI library to the STEPLIB concatenation in the JCL for the IBM HTTP Server. Start of changeSDFHEXCI and SDFHDLL1 are downwardly compatible with CICS TS 2.3 and CICS TS 2.2.End of change
  4. Use the following command in the directory that contains the httpd.conf file for the IBM HTTP Server:
    ln -e DFHWBAPI dfhwbapi.so
    When it is used in the STEPLIB concatenation, this command establishes a link from the IBM HTTP Server's home directory to the DLL dfhwbapi.so in member DFHWBAPI in the CICSTS31.CICS.SDFHDLL1 library.
  5. Add one or more service directives to the httpd.conf file. Service directives map the URL entered by the end user to the CICS resources that will satisfy the request. Service directives for DFHWBAPI have the following format:
    Service  /sourceurl/*  /home/dfhwbapi.so:DFHService/targeturl/*
    where the values are:
    home
    is the directory that contains the httpd.conf file for the IBM HTTP Server.
    sourceurl
    is a string of characters that selects an incoming URL to be processed by DFHWBAPI. The asterisk following it is a wildcard string representing the remaining characters of the incoming URL. sourceurl can be in any format, so details such as the applid and the transaction can be hidden from end users.
    targeturl
    targeturl is a string of characters that DFHWBAPI will use to determine which CICS resources will satisfy the user request. After substitution of the wildcard, targeturl must be in the format:
    /applid/converter/tran/program/filename
    where the values are:
    applid
    the application id of the target CICS region
    converter
    the name of the converter program to be used in the CICS region, or CICS if no converter is to be used.
    tran
    the transaction to be executed in the CICS region. Because the transaction is the target of an EXCI request, it should not be the Web alias transaction CWBA, but should be a mirror transaction, such as CSM3. The transaction receives targeturl/*, not sourceurl/*, as the incoming URL.
    program
    the name of the program to be executed in the CICS region.
    filename
    is any further information that will be examined by program.
    If DFHWBAPI is used to access 3270 applications, CICS generates HTML forms which are displayed on the Web client. The URL which CICS inserts in the HTML form matches the targeturl used in the previous request. To handle this situation, you must provide a service directive of the following form, in addition to those described above:
    Service  /targeturl/*  /home/dfhwbapi.so:DFHService
    In this case, the targeturl is passed unchanged to DFHWBAPI.
  6. Some of the CICS-supplied template definitions for CICS-supplied transactions contain references to graphics files in the format:
    /dfhwbimg/filename
    where DFHWBIMG is a special-purpose CICS-supplied converter program used by the CICS Web bridge. If you want such graphics files to be displayed correctly, you should include a directive as follows:
    Service  /dfhwbimg/*  /home/dfhwbapi.so:DFHService/applid/DFHWBIMG/CSM3/*
    where applid specifies the CICS system that will supply the graphics files (this may not be the same CICS system that does the bridge work).
If you are accessing CICS Web application using both CICS Web support and the CICS business logic interface, you must specify the same host code page for both. The default host code page for CICS is IBM-037, but for the IBM HTTP Server it is IBM-1047. You can change the default code page for the IBM HTTP Server by using the DefaultFsCp configuration directive. For example:
DefaultFsCp IBM-1047
To change the default code page used by CICS, specify it in the DOCCODEPAGE system initialization parameter (for example, DOCCODEPAGE=1047). Documents and document fragments referenced using this default must be encoded in the specified code page. In particular, if you are using document templates generated from BMS map definitions, you should use a template customization macro to change the code page in which the templates are generated. Use the CODEPAGE parameter of the DFHMDX macro to specify this. For example:
DFHMDX MAPSET=*,MAP=*,CODEPAGE=1047
For more information on customizing templates generated from BMS map definitions, see Creating HTML templates from BMS definitions.