An application is a collection of related programs that together perform a business operation, such as processing a product order or preparing a company payroll. CICS® applications execute under CICS control, using CICS services and interfaces to access programs and files.
CICS is a transaction processing subsystem. That means that it provides services for you to run applications online, by request, at the same time as many other users are submitting requests to run the same applications, using the same files and programs. CICS manages the sharing of resources; integrity of data and prioritization of execution, with fast response.
CICS applications are traditionally run by submitting a transaction request. Execution of the transaction consists of running one or more application programs that implement the required function. In CICS documentation you may find CICS application programs sometimes simply called programs, and sometimes the term transaction is used to imply the processing done by the application programs.
CICS applications can also take the form of Enterprise JavaBeans. You can find out more about this form of programming in Java™ Applications in CICS in the CICS Information Center.
You should note that the term transaction is now used extensively in the IT industry to describe a unit of recovery or what CICS calls a unit of work. This is typically a complete operation that is recoverable; it can be committed or backed out as an entirety as a result of programmed command or system failure. In many cases the scope of a CICS transaction is also a single unit of work, but you should be aware of the difference in meaning when reading CICS documentation.
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