Creating the CICS infrastructure for a service requester

To create the CICS® infrastructure for a service requester, you must define and install a number of CICS resources. In many cases, CICS can generate some of these resources automatically.

For a service requester application deployed with the help of the CICS Web services assistant, you will need to define the following:
A PIPELINE resource definition
With its associated pipeline configuration file, the PIPELINE resource defines the attributes of the pipeline which is used to process outbound Web service requests, and the responses. Typically, one pipeline can process requests for many different Web services, and when you deploy a new service requester in your CICS system, you will be able to use an existing pipeline.

As well as the configuration file, the PIPELINE resource specifies a pickup directory, which contains Web service binding files.

When you install a PIPELINE resource, or when you issue a PERFORM PIPELINE SCAN command (using CEMT or the CICS system programming interface), CICS reads the files in the pickup directory, and creates URIMAP and WEBSERVICE resources dynamically.

A WEBSERVICE resource definition

The WEBSERVICE resource defines the execution environment that lets your CICS application program operate as a Web service requester.

Although you can define and install WEBSERVICE resources using RDO, you are advised to create them dynamically. There is one WEBSERVICE resource definition for each target Web service.

Perform the following steps to create the CICS infrastructure for your service requester:

  1. Define the pipeline. Repeat this step for each different pipeline configuration you need.
  2. Create a Web service binding file for each service requester application. Put the file into the pickup directory of the pipeline that you want to use for the service requester.
  3. Create a WEBSERVICE resource for each application program. Use the PERFORM PIPELINE SCAN command to do this. Repeat this step whenever you add a Web service binding file to the pickup directory for the PIPELINE.
Your CICS system will now contain the infrastructure needed for each service requester:
You can extend the configuration when you need to do so: