Establish Link3270 suitability

You need to establish that your applications are suitable for use with the Link3270 bridge. This can be done in two ways:

  1. Using the load module scanner to identify if the applications use any instructions that are not supported by the bridge. This involves the following steps:
  2. Using the 3270 Bridge Passthrough SupportPak ( See Using the 3270 Bridge Passthrough SupportPak) to check if the application uses any unsupported interfaces.

    The bridge is designed to support applications conforming to the documented CICS® API specified in the CICS Application Programming Reference, subject to the restrictions described in Link3270 programming considerations. To confirm whether the application (and associated vendor products used on the system) conform to this, the application should be run under the Passthrough application. There may be various routes through the program which use different EXEC CICS API commands. Each of these routes should be tested using the Passthrough.

Using the Load Module Scanner Utility

The load module scanner is a batch utility that scans load modules for specified CICS API commands. The commands to be reported upon are defined as a filter input file. A sample command filter list (DFHEIDBR) is provided to search for commands that are not supported in the 3270 bridge environment, and an output report identifies the commands and load module offsets, including EDF information if available. See the CICS Operations and Utilities Guide for information about running the Load Module Scanner Utility.

Using the 3270 Bridge Passthrough SupportPak

The CA1E SupportPak is a support package providing the CICS 3270 Bridge Passthrough tool. This allows you to run a CICS 3270 user transaction from a 3270 terminal in the normal way, but internally CICS uses the Link3270 bridge logic instead of real 3270 terminal support. This allows you to evaluate whether a CICS 3270 transaction is suitable to be driven using the 3270 bridge.

The Passthrough transactions also allow you to examine the 3270 data streams and log them for further analysis. You can then use this information to write the client program that will drive the CICS 3270 transaction instead of a real 3270 terminal.

The CA1E SupportPak can be obtained from the Web, at the following URL:

http://www.software.ibm.com/ts/cics/txppacs

Related concepts
The Link3270 bridge mechanism
Related tasks
Writing the Link3270 client
Using Link3270 messages
Using Link3270 single transaction mode
Using Link3270 session mode
Calling the Link3270 bridge
Using data conversion with Link3270
Related reference
Link3270 message formats
Link3270 diagnostics
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