The following terminology is used in connection with the enhancements
to CICS® Web
support:
- CICS as
an HTTP server
- The process where CICS receives HTTP requests from Web clients, and sends
responses. A user application program may be used to process the request and
provide the response, or a static response may be specified using a URIMAP
definition.
- CICS as
an HTTP client
- The process where a user application program sends requests through CICS to
HTTP servers, and receives responses.
- Static response
- An HTTP response that is constructed by CICS from a document template or HFS file
specified by a URIMAP definition.
- Application-generated response
- An HTTP response that is built dynamically by a user application program.
This can be either a Web-aware application program or a non-Web-aware application
program.
- Web-aware application program
- An application program that uses the EXEC CICS WEB application
programming interface commands to receive a Web client's request and send
an HTTP response.
- Non-Web-aware application program
- For CICS Web
support, an application program that does not use the EXEC CICS WEB application
programming interface commands. These programs can be enabled for the Web
using a converter program, which translates the Web client's request into
acceptable input, and composes an HTTP response based on the program's output.
- Web client
- Any client application that makes an HTTP request to CICS as an HTTP
server. This might be a Web browser that displays responses to a human user,
or an automatic user agent (such as an information gatherer for a search engine),
or an application program (such as a CICS application that makes HTTP client
requests).
- Chunked transfer-coding (also known as chunking)
- The process where the body of an HTTP message is transferred as a series
of chunks, each with its own chunk size header.
- Pipelining
- The process where a client sends multiple HTTP requests to a server without
waiting for a response. Responses must then be returned from the server in
the same sequence that the requests were received.
- Idempotency
- A property of an individual HTTP method or a pipelined sequence of requests.
If a method is idempotent, the same result is always obtained when you repeat
the same request with that method. If a request sequence is idempotent, the
same result is always obtained when all, or part, of the series of requests
is repeated.
- Persistent connection
- A connection between a Web client and an HTTP server which can be reused
for more than one exchange of a request and a response.
- URL
- A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a specific type of URI (Universal
Resource Identifier). A URI can name any resource, whereas a URL normally
locates an existing resource on the Internet.
- Virtual hosting
- The situation where a single HTTP server can represent multiple hosts
at the same IP address. Each host name that is provided in this way is known
as a virtual host.