A FILE resource defines the physical and operational characteristics
of a file.
The FILE definition includes attributes that provide information about
record characteristics, the types of operations allowed on the file, recovery
attributes, and the operations that are to be journaled. CICS files usually
correspond to physical data sets that must have been defined to VSAM before
they are used. Using CICS files, your applications can:
- Access records in the data set directly
- Access records in a data table that has been loaded from the data set
- Access records in a coupling facility data table where there is no data
set involved (because LOAD(NO) is specified on the CFDT file definition).
The following resources associated with CICS files can be managed using
RDO:
- VSAM files (this includes files that refer to CICS-maintained, user-maintained,
and coupling facility data tables as well as files that refer to VSAM data
sets)
- Remote VSAM files
- Remote BDAM files
- VSAM local shared resource (LSR) pools
For the file to be used by an active CICS system, its definition must have
been installed on to the system. CICS file control uses the installed definition
to find the file when it needs to access it, to keep count of the number of
tasks using the file, to capture processing statistics, and maintain other
file control information.