This document explains special Natural CICS functionality.
It covers the following sections:
One of the first actions a Natural task does at its start, is to activate an exit for
abnormal termination processing. This exit is used to release all resources including the
thread in the case of an abnormal termination. Therefore, a non-Natural program must not
issue EXEC CICS ABEND CANCEL or the equivalent macro level
request, as such a request cancels the current session ignoring any active exit. If so,
Natural is not able to clean up its resources, and the thread and the roll facility are
not released.
A thread is assigned to a Natural task whenever a Natural program is active. This is also true when non-Natural programs are called (following CICS linkage conventions).
Therefore, such programs should not do excessive I/O and other work load without Natural
receiving control in between. If a non-Natural program is doing conversational screen I/O,
you can code a SET CONTROL 'P=V' statement in the Natural program that calls
the non-Natural program before the calling statement: this indicates that parameter data
are copied out of the thread and the session is rolled out before calling the non-Natural
program.
A non-Natural program is invoked (CALLed) by Natural in the way programs are invoked within the underlying operating and/or TP monitor system.
In CICS, non-Natural programs are invoked by means of EXEC CICS
LINK requests. However, when, for example, the same subroutine program
(not issuing any CICS or operating system request) is to be used for both batch and
online processing, a non-Natural program may also be invoked by using standard linkage
conventions, that is, via BASR R14,R15.
For further information, see the terminal command %P=S in the Terminal Commands
documentation. See also the parameter SLCALL in the macro NTCICSP.
By default, non-Natural programs are called with the addresses of the request parameter
lists (see the description of the CALL statement in the Natural Statements
documentation) passed in the TWA and/or a COMMAREA (depending on the setting of the
NTCICSP macro parameter CALLRPL).
A more CICS-like method is to pass the parameter values in a CICS COMMAREA or a CICS Container (see Support for CICS Channels and Containers), particularly when the called program resides in another CICS region - Distributed Program Link (DPL) -, as addresses within the "calling" region are not accessible by the "called" region.
For details and restrictions, see the terminal commands %P=C and %P=CC in the Terminal Commands
documentation.
This functionality requires CALLRPL to be set to ON in
NTCICSP.
When the parameter values are passed in a CICS COMMAREA or CICS container, no parameter
list pointers are passed in the CICS TWA, regardless of the CALLRPL
setting.
If a SET CONTROL 'QO' statement is placed before a Natural statement that
causes a screen I/O, the terminal output is not executed by Natural under CICS.
Consequently, both the Enter key and user input are not passed back to
Natural.
This functionality may be useful in the following situations:
When leaving pseudo-conversational screen I/O to non-Natural programs called by
Natural. The non-Natural program performs the EXEC CICS
SEND operation and returns to Natural. Due to the SET CONTROL
'QO' statement, the next Natural screen I/O terminates the task of a
pseudo-conversational session. Upon screen input, Natural receives control and invokes
the non-Natural program again, which then performs the EXEC CICS
RECEIVE.
When changing the Natural pseudo-conversational transaction ID "in-flight" without requiring a terminal operator intervention:
MOVE *INIT-ID TO termid CALLNAT 'CMTRNSET' trnid /* change the restart transaction ID * starting a task on your terminal forces an interrupt as if * pressing any attention identifier CALL 'CMTASK' USING trnid H'0000' H'00000000' termid SET CONTROL 'QO' INPUT 'DUMMY' /* dummy I/O, which you will never see WRITE 'HELLO' *INIT-PROGRAM /* now the new transaction ID is active
When switching to an application outside Natural, perhaps even in another CICS AOR (application-owning region), without requiring a terminal operator intervention:
* starting a task on your terminal forces an interrupt as if * pressing any attention identifier CALL 'CMTASK' USING trnid data-length start-data termid SET CONTROL 'QO' INPUT 'DUMMY' /* dummy I/O, which you will never see WRITE 'HELLO' *INIT-PROGRAM /* now the new transaction ID is active
In this case, it is the responsibility of the application being invoked to stack the Natural restart data when they are passed in a CICS COMMAREA, as a COMMAREA most likely is used by the new (pseudo-conversational) application, too.