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How CICS supports event processing

CICS® supports the production of events from new and existing applications for emission to a variety of event consumers.

CICS event processing enhances business flexibility by providing a risk-free methodology for enhancing business applications. Events are defined and controlled outside the CICS application logic, providing unobtrusive extensions to the business application.

CICS provides support for simple atomic events. However, these events can be consumed by a complex event processing engine in which they can be combined with events from other sources in addition to CICS.

CICS event processing focuses on events of significance to the business, providing enhanced business flexibility and governance to business applications, rather than additional systems management tooling through events.

CICS event processing can emit events at a number of clearly defined points, known as capture points. A capture point is an opportunity for an event to be emitted. Capture points are provided before and after selected EXEC CICS API calls and at program start. All significant points in a CICS application can emit an event.

CICS event processing workflow

CICS event processing supports a flow of work between three classes of user.

The business management user
Understands the needs of the business, but does not necessarily know about the programs and computer systems that support that business. This kind of user uses a new CICS tool to express business needs in high-level terms. For example, an online camera retail business need might be: "I need marketing to be notified of every order for a telescope that exceeds £2000." This need might exist so that the customer can be targeted with offers for high-specification digital cameras.
The application analyst or programmer
Understands, or can investigate, how an existing application was designed. He or she can identify which part of an application needs to be extended to meet the needs of the business manager. In the example above, the application analyst or programmer must know which part of a program detects orders for telescopes, where to find the value of any such order, and where to find any other data that might be useful in satisfying the business need.
The CICS system programmer
Understands how programs interact with CICS, and can help the application analyst or programmer to deploy the new event processing resources. The system programmer can enable the EP adapters to work; for example, defining a queue to WebSphere MQ for use with the WMQ Queue EP adapter. The system programmer can also monitor and optimize the performance of the system and its applications and can debug and diagnose problems related to the application and its events.

In your organization, some or all of these classes of user might be combined in one person. The tool used by all the users is the CICS event binding editor, that is is part of the CICS Explorer. It is designed to allow the different classes of user to work as a team to implement event processing.

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