CICS® distributed program link (DPL) allows you to link to server programs located on a remote system. A client program running in a CICS Transaction Server for z/OS® region can link to one or more server programs running in remote CICS regions. The remote regions may or may not be CICS Transaction Server for z/OS systems; (they could be, for example, CICS Transaction Server for Windows or CICS 6000 systems). See Introduction to CICS intercommunication for a list of systems with which CICS Transaction Server for z/OS can communicate.
DPL programs can be written in PL/I, C, COBOL, or assembler language.
As CICS distributed program link indicates, there are two sides (programs) involved in DPL: the client program and the server program. To implement DPL, there are actions that each program must take. These actions are described below.