A TERMINAL resource defines the characteristics of a terminal device which communicates with CICS®. Terminal devices include visual display units, printers, operating system consoles, and more specialized devices such as facsimile (FAX) machines.
The unique and possibly dynamic properties of terminals are defined in the TERMINAL definition in the CSD file.
One TYPETERM can represent a lot of the properties of many terminals. Some of these properties can be left undefined at the time of creating the TYPETERM definition. These properties can be determined at logon time for each terminal, from the QUERY structured field.
There are, however, still more properties that many terminals have in common, to the extent that their TERMINAL definitions would all be identical. CICS provides a facility that avoids the need for each terminal to have its own resource definition installed in the TCT the whole time CICS is active.
Autoinstall reduces the virtual storage required for the terminal control table (TCT) if some of your terminals are not logged on when CICS is active.
If you are involved in planning for and managing CICS communications resources such as terminals, read Autoinstalling VTAM terminals for further information.