BTS consists of an application programming interface and support services that simplify the development of business transactions. It also allows you to control the execution of complex business transactions. Each action that makes up the business transaction is implemented as one or more CICS transactions.
All the processing associated with completing the business transaction are modelled at build time and then executed at run time. It is at run time that the deployed adapter service becomes operational. In BTS, an instance of a running business transaction is called a process. A process is a collection of one or more BTS activities. An activity is a basic unit of BTS execution and it is mapped to a traditional CICS® transaction.
There is also a top-level program that is called the root activity, and this is used to control the overall progress of the business transaction. The root activity in CICS Service Flow Runtime is the Navigation Manager (DFHMAMGR). When the adapter service is deployed to the CICS Service Flow Runtime, it exists as a process that is organized hierarchically. Data is exchanged using BTS data-containers. Data-containers are named areas of storage that are associated with a particular process or activity, and are maintained by BTS.
An adapter service is invoked when a service requester sends a request message to the CICS Service Flow Runtime. This is received by a stub program that initiates the Navigation Manager DFHMAMGR as the root activity. The Navigation Manager uses information contained in the request message to initiate the programmatic functions of the adapter service. These programmatic functions are known as server adapters, and are initiated using request processing. Request processing can vary, depending on the deployment pattern of the adapter service.
The following figure shows the components that are used when a service requester invokes an adapter service that is comprised of more than one server adapter.
With CICS Service Flow Runtime, the functionality modeled using the Service Flow Modeler enables any application that is capable of initiating a CICS program to access:
Several examples of adapter services that implement business transactions are: