Programming CICS DPL transactions in the distributed environment

CICS(R) DPL programs and transactions can be driven through the CICS bridge when the client application resides on a workstation.

The main consideration when programming for the distributed environment is data conversion between the different encoding schemes and CCSID values of the workstation and z/OS(TM). Conversion is carried out by two different routines, one for the MQCIH structure and another for the vector.

You can ensure that the MQCIH is converted by specifying MQFMT_CICS in the MQMD.Format field. Data conversion, however, requires a little more consideration.

If you are driving a DPL program that neither receives nor returns COMMAREA data, or if the COMMAREA data is purely character data, you can achieve data conversion by specifying MQFMT_STRING in field MQCIH.Format. If your COMMAREA data is not purely character data, you must write your own conversion routine.