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Adapter services

An adapter service is the set of files, programs and definitions that are generated by Service Flow Modeler and deployed in CICS® Service Flow Runtime. It represents the service flow that was modeled, and contains the necessary programs to run that flow when it is invoked by a service requester.

An adapter service is comprised of one or more server adapters, that each represent a particular function that was modeled in the flow. For example, FEPI screen navigation would generate a FEPI server adapter. The adapter service adheres to a deployment pattern, that describes whether it is simple or complex.

Depending on the deployment pattern of the adapter service, the processing that takes place in the runtime environment varies, but also adheres to a processing pattern. If the adapter service has more than one server adapter, an Adapter Navigator is required to manage the order in which the server adapters are run and the results of their processing. If the adapter service is simple, then the Adapter Navigator is not required and the server adapter is run directly by the Navigation Manager.

You can also define that the adapter service should run asynchronously, if you're using WebSphere MQ, or synchronously for any supported interface. You can also set the persistence to log the processing in a BTS repository.

In addition to the supported types of server adapters, you can initiate custom programs using an EXEC CICS LINK command to augment the functionality of the adapter service. If you want to include behavior in your adapter service that you cannot directly model in Service Flow Modeler, you can write a custom program to perform the function you require and then model a link to it in the flow. The mechanism that is used to invoke the custom program is the same as the mechanism used to initiate a CICS application using a distributed programming link.

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