Application events

An application event is a type of business event that results from application program activity and contains application data.

You can specify that an event is emitted when your application issues any of the event enabled EXEC CICS API commands or when an application program is initiated. The event enabled EXEC CICS® commands are shown in Capture points.Start of changeA limited set of CICS modules have also been event enabled so that you can capture events from, for example: file and temporary storage commands coming from Atom support; EXEC CICS LINK commands issued by the CICS WebSphere® MQ bridge program; commands from the CICS samples and the CECI transaction.End of change

The capture specification defines the criteria for event emission by using filters, such as the transaction ID, program name, or EXEC CICS command option value. This capture specification can be further refined by filtering on the application data associated with the command. For example, you can specify that the COMMAREA field containing an order value must be greater than 10,000. The capture specification also defines the location of the data to be captured.

The location of the event in the application logic depends on how it is specified. If a CICS application contains two instances of the same EXEC CICS API command, and the filter specification does not distinguish between the two commands, an event is emitted when both commands are issued. If the same EXEC CICS API command occurs in two applications and there is no filter on the transaction ID or program name, an event is emitted when both applications run.

Capture points

You can capture events at program initiation (PGMINIT) and the following EXEC CICS API capture points.

The EXEC CICS commands that can be specified as a capture point are as follow:
  • CONVERSE
  • DELETE FILE
  • DELETEQ TD
  • DELETEQ TS
  • INVOKE SERVICE
  • LINK PROGRAM
  • PUT CONTAINER
  • READ
  • READNEXT
  • READPREV
  • READQ TD
  • READQ TS
  • RECEIVE
  • RECEIVE MAP
  • RETRIEVE
  • RETURN
  • REWRITE
  • SEND
  • SEND MAP
  • SEND TEXT
  • SIGNAL EVENT 1
  • START
  • WEB READ
  • WEB READNEXT
  • WRITE FILE
  • WRITEQ TD
  • WRITEQ TS
  • XCTL
Note: 1 The sole purpose of the SIGNAL EVENT API command is to provide data for an event. An event is only emitted if there is a matching capture specification enabled in the CICS system.