Terminology

The following terminology is used in connection with the enhancements to CICS® Web support:

CICS as an HTTP server
The process where CICS receives HTTP requests from Web clients, and sends responses. A user application program may be used to process the request and provide the response, or a static response may be specified using a URIMAP definition.
CICS as an HTTP client
The process where a user application program sends requests through CICS to HTTP servers, and receives responses.
Static response
An HTTP response that is constructed by CICS from a document template or HFS file specified by a URIMAP definition.
Application-generated response
An HTTP response that is built dynamically by a user application program. This can be either a Web-aware application program or a non-Web-aware application program.
Web-aware application program
An application program that uses the EXEC CICS WEB application programming interface commands to receive a Web client's request and send an HTTP response.
Non-Web-aware application program
For CICS Web support, an application program that does not use the EXEC CICS WEB application programming interface commands. These programs can be enabled for the Web using a converter program, which translates the Web client's request into acceptable input, and composes an HTTP response based on the program's output.
Web client
Any client application that makes an HTTP request to CICS as an HTTP server. This might be a Web browser that displays responses to a human user, or an automatic user agent (such as an information gatherer for a search engine), or an application program (such as a CICS application that makes HTTP client requests).
Chunked transfer-coding (also known as chunking)
The process where the body of an HTTP message is transferred as a series of chunks, each with its own chunk size header.
Pipelining
The process where a client sends multiple HTTP requests to a server without waiting for a response. Responses must then be returned from the server in the same sequence that the requests were received.
Idempotency
A property of an individual HTTP method or a pipelined sequence of requests. If a method is idempotent, the same result is always obtained when you repeat the same request with that method. If a request sequence is idempotent, the same result is always obtained when all, or part, of the series of requests is repeated.
Persistent connection
A connection between a Web client and an HTTP server which can be reused for more than one exchange of a request and a response.
URL
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a specific type of URI (Universal Resource Identifier). A URI can name any resource, whereas a URL normally locates an existing resource on the Internet.
Virtual hosting
The situation where a single HTTP server can represent multiple hosts at the same IP address. Each host name that is provided in this way is known as a virtual host.