SoftwareMining CICS Handling

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Cornelius Copeland
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1 SoftwareMining Moving from COBOL to Java, COBOL to C# - to 21 st Century SoftwareMining CICS Handling Copyright SoftwareMining Version 2.0 Intended Audience: Java Programmers, Java Architects C# Programmers and Architect.

2 1 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON CICS TRANSLATIONS Most of the implementation of CICS framework is self explanatory. However, certain area s are not as obvious. This document endeavours to explain some of these issues. 1.1 CICS QUEUES Cics uses two form of queues: TS Type storage - CICS Stores the data in Virtual Memory or VSAM record (database in java), depending on whether MAIN or AUXILARY storage has been specified. The MAIN or AUXILARY is specified in CICS statements. E.g. EXEC CIC WRITEQ / READQ MAIN/AUXILARY. The MAIN Storage currently reads/writes from MEMORY and AUXILARY reads/writes to database. MEMORY queues are stored in a static HashMap (or C# dictionary) on application server. This means they are much faster, but the information will be lost on restarting the application server. Auxiliary (or TD Type storages) are written to a database file, and will not be affected by restarting application server. TD Transient-Data. These are written to Database. TD data have 2 further subcategories: o Intra-partition storage... o Extra-Partition TD Storage. In CICS this is relatively inefficient and not used too often. Notes: Extra-partition or Transient storage queues are deleted after read. Intra-partition ones are not automatically deleted after read. The following database table is required for storage of TD or TS/Auxiliary queues. CREATE TABLE CICS_QUEUE ( QUEUE_NAME CHAR(255), QUEUE_TYPE CHAR(2), ITEM_NUMBER INTEGER DEFAULT -1, AUXILARY INTEGER, STORAGE_LENGTH INTEGER, SoftwareMining Page 2 of 10

3 SYSID INTEGER, DATA CHAR(32767), -- Please use BLOB if size exceeds max for database, KEY (QUEUE_NAME, QUEUE_TYPE,ITEM_NUMBER) 1.2 CICS ROUTING. This is used to redirect data sent via SEND statements usually to printers although CICS allows data to also be sent to a different terminal (e.g. administrator terminal). Routing to Printers Java security system does not allow the application server to communicate directly with printers. The framework will thus write the information (from SEND statement) to a print directory. It is expected that a 2ndry shell script should monitor this directory, and forward any new files to a printer. Due to operating system centric nature of this script file SoftwareMining currently does not provide such script. But it should very easy to write. This design allows additional formatting to be performed on the files (e.g. additional colour or bold headers/footers) before submission to printers. Print Directories: Routed data is written to: DATA_DIR + "/" + routedo.getterminalid() + "/" [+ owner.getclass() + _ ] + dataobject.getclass() + SEQUENTIAL_FILE_EXTENSION Where: DATA_DIR is specified in corect.properties file. routedo.getterminalid() : The Terminal ID as specified by the routing statement. This is used as the name of sub-directory which the reports will be written to. Typically the sub-directoires will have names which relate to printer ports e.g. LPT1 or LPT2. The system will create this subdirectory if one does not exist. owner.getclass() owner is the calling program. E.g. if the program calling the ROUTE/SEND was called CUSTMAINT the file name will be prefixed by CustMaint_. This prefixing feature can be switched on/off use the following entry in corect.properties file: PREFIX_NAME_OF_SEQUENTIAL_FILES_WITH_CALLING_PROGRAM=false (default is false) dataobject.getclass() Refers to data-class which was sent for printing (in SEND statement). E.g. if program CUSTMAINT may be sending a CUSTOMER record to be printed on LPT1 printer then the generated file will be: DATA_DIR/LPT1/CustMaint_Custmer.txt SEQUENTIAL_FILE_EXTENSION is specified in corect.properties file. This is the extension used for ALL generated data-files. The default is set to.txt SoftwareMining Page 3 of 10

4 Routing to Terminals In Java/HTML there is no way to control different browsers cannot be supported. For this reason, routine to terminals will be interpreted as routing to Printers and written to an associated directory. This way, a script can pick up important messages to Administrators from a relevant directory and /text such info to the administrator(s). SoftwareMining does not provide the ing or texting scripts. 2 CICS PERSISTENT OPERATIONS (READ/WRITE/DELETE/REWRITE). CICS CRUD statements communicate with the persistent layer using an approach similar to use of java REFLECTION / meta-data. For example, a CICS WRITE statement is passed a string containing data, and a File-name to write the data. in the new languages this approach is no longer used: Database tables contain predefined COLUMNS (instead of a single column representing the entire record). Database-tables operations now use the column names to write specific, type-casted data. Modern systems push this approach further by using object-relational approach, to increase the long term maintainability of the system. SoftwareMining s CORECT translator uses all kinds of heuristics to change the system from reflection based approach to Object-Relational one. But sometimes it will not have sufficient information and in such cases some manual changes to code will be required. Consider the following example: READ DATASET ('CUST-FILE') RIDFLD (WS-FIELD-1) INTO (CLIENT-RECORD) END-EXEC. The system will use this information to create the Object-Relation class ClientRecord, and hence generate the statement clientrecord.assigntablename( Cust-File ); // following line searches the database for column pre-defined as KEY for value WsField1 clientrecord.assignkeyvalue( anotherrecord.getwsfield1()); clientrecord.read(); SoftwareMining Page 4 of 10

5 In 99% of the cases, the above approach will work. But there will be the occasional instances where there are simply not enough information to generate this. For example consider the following statement (assume WS-FILE-NAME variable contains value 'CUST-FILE' ) READ DATASET (WS-FILE-NAME) RIDFLD (WS-FIELD-1) SET (WS-ADDRESS) END-EXEC. In this case the most of the important information is passed to CICS at run-time. There is no obvious way design time to decipher the name of table, or the column-name needed for checking/matching RIDFIELD. In this case, the operation should also be performed on clientrecord above. But there is no way for the system to know this at runtime. In such cases, in order to draw attention to the issue, the code generated may contain compilation problems and require manual fixes. Determining the Index/Key fields RIDFLD field provide the value for the index field but does not necessarily define the key-field itself. For example in the following CICS statement: EXEC CICS READ DATASET ('AABB') INTO (CLIENT-RECORD) RIDFLD (WS-FILE-KEY) END-EXEC. This is converted to an operation on CLIENT-RECORD - which does not contain the key group WS-FILE-KEY. clientrecord.read(); We can add a heuristic to translator to look for a field/group called KEY and assign that as the record index. Note This approach/heuristic only works if the application has been using a consistent coding standard. Otherwise index-keys have to be manually added to each structure. Q: CICS to SQL data-definition. CICS VSAM Access (EXEC CICS READ/WRITE/REWRITE) - How are VSAM Key s identified? CICS data structures are defined within WORKING STORAGE area of each program. The system can be configured to look for fields/groups whose name contain KEY. If structure does not contain any such fields/groups the end-users will have to manually add the Key information to the generated code. SoftwareMining Page 5 of 10

6 Where possible, the translator will create a persistent data-access-object. Q: Packed decimal fields: What happens to Packed decimal fields when SQL Databases (substitution for KSDS VSAM Files) The system will write the numeric field values instead of the binary representation of the fields. E.g. for a field called AGE the database will contain the actual age of a person, and not the binary representation (as it would have been in VSAM KSDS). SoftwareMining Page 6 of 10

1.3 BMS SUPPORT CICS/BMS can generate maps (Data-Beans) whose fields are ALIGNED or UN- ALIGNED. The ALIGNED is recommended. (see article : https://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/cicsts/v3r1/index.

7 1.3 BMS SUPPORT CICS/BMS can generate maps (Data-Beans) whose fields are ALIGNED or UN- ALIGNED. The ALIGNED is recommended. (see article : com.ibm.cics.ts31.doc%2fdfht3%2fdfht3mx.htm ). The translator also defaults to generating ALIGNED maps. Please use the following in translator File Setup target language to change this setting. SoftwareMining Page 7 of 10

8 3 CONFIGURING SERVICES: PROGRAM CONTROL TABLE (PCT) DATA CICS Program Control Table defines mapping between CICS Transaction-ids (1-4 characters) and the program names. The transaction-ids are used by Online CICS applications for invocation of programs. For example, a start-up screen may specify launch of transaction MENU. In CICS PCT would have mapped MENU to program INVMENU.cbl. The translated system will require a similar transactionid-programname mapping to be defined. Java: a configuration file called services.properties should contain the transaction-id to program-name needs to be placed on CLASSPATH. The services.properties file should contain information such as: MENU=INVMENU INQ1=CUSTINQ1 INQ2=CUSTINQ2 C#: the application configuration file XXX.config should contain a services section which maps the transaction-id to program-name. Ie something like: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <configsections> <section name="services" type="system.configuration.namevaluesectionhandler" /> <services> <add key="menu" value="invmenu" /> <add key="inq1" value="custinq1" /> <add key="inq2" value="custinq2" /> </services> SoftwareMining Page 8 of 10

9 4 DEPLOYING ONLINE APPLICATIONS; USING TRANS-ID TO LAUNCH PROGRAMS Translated CICS online applications are deployed within application-servers such as Tomcat or IIS (see Application Deployment document). Next step is to Configure the list of Services (CICS TransIDS vs Program-Names). Once these have been configured, a index.jsp file can be configured as an entry point into the system. This file contains the following: <html> <head> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="javascripts.js"></script> <title>entry Screen</title> </head> <body onload="onload()" onkeydown="keydown(event)" background="#aaaaaa"> <form method="post" action="/webpoc/myservlet"> <h2>softwaremining </h2> <p class="main"> </p> <div class="main-panel"><br> SoftwareMining Launcher Enter transid to launch corresponding program <br> <table border="0" width="400"> <tr> <td> <input name="_app_package_name_" type="hidden" value="com.client.project"> <input name="_transid_" size="20"> </td> <td width="20%"> <input type="submit" target="t1" name="launcher" value="launch" class="form"></td> </tr> </table> </div> </form> </body> </html> Note: com.client.project Denotes the package specified during the translation. Please change to match that of the target application, WebPOC/MyServlet is the servlet as defined in Application Deployment document. Running the application will then show index.html with a single input area. Enter the CICS transaction id (e.g. INQ1 ) to launch the corresponding program. SoftwareMining Page 9 of 10

10 5 ONLINE APPLICATIONS; USING XSLT OR JSP (OR ASP FOR C#) The system will generate an XML file during translation of each BMS (or MFS) screen. These are placed in directory [target-output-directory]/screens. These xml files are always required by the translation whether the system is configured to use XSLT or JSP/ASP. The application server will require access to these files please do not remove. The XML files contain much important information such as default values, initial states, program fields required to read/write information into and more. The deployed application will continue referencing them, irrespective of presence of JSP versions. SCREEN DESIGN UTILITIES SoftwareMining provides two additional utility applications: ScreenDesigner: can help optimize the XML screens. For example, an input-field for Gender/Sex may accept values M (male) and F (female). The utility will allow changing the field from standard input (character base) to a set of radio buttons for M / F, or a drop down box. The changes will be saved in the XML file. ScreenViewer: this application can render the XML files into HTML ie show them as they would appear in the final screen. The utility also allows generation of JSP files from each XML. These utilities are available from ). DEPLOYMENT USING JSP INSTEAD OF XML FILES By default, the system will use a process of XSLT to convert the screen XML files to HTML at runtime. The design uses the xml transformation file sm-servlet.xsl which is distributed with the configuration files (available from ). Add the following parameter to corect.properties file to get the system to use the JSP version of the screens instead of XML/XSLT. Please note the XML screen definitions will continue to be required by the application ie do not delete them. VIEW_MODE_IS_JSP=true SoftwareMining Page 10 of 10

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