"Planning your CICS® Web support architecture for CICS as an HTTP server" in the CICS Internet Guide explains the different methods that you can use to respond to a Web client's request, and the components that are used for each response method.
Application-generated responses use more resources than static responses. Application-generated responses require an alias transaction to be attached (although the Web attach task terminates when processing is handed over to the alias transaction). An analyzer program, converter program, or more than one user-written application program might be involved in processing the request and producing the response. Typically, greater elapsed time and processor time is required to produce the response.
Static responses involve only the Web attach task, a URIMAP definition, and the source document for the response body. Performance for a static response is better than for an application-generated response, so if you are using an architecture with an application program and analyzer program to deliver a simple response document, you should consider converting this to a static response. Within this category, performance is further influenced by the choice of source document used for the response body, which can be:
The CICS Application Programming Guide has more information about the different types of CICS document template, and how to set them up. If you are using a CICS document template to provide a static response, ensure that the definition is installed before you use it. Among the types of document template, the fastest results can generally be achieved by storing your templates as CICS programs. However, note that these modules are managed like other CICS loaded programs, and may be flushed out by program compression when storage is constrained.