Use of Commarea while making a CALL in COBOL CICS program?

Customer Information Control System. Middleware and MQ Series.
Post Reply
nicc
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 691
Joined: Wed Apr 23, 2014 8:45 pm

Re: Use of Commarea while making a CALL in COBOL CICS program?

Post by nicc »

What CICS facilities does USER_PROG use?
Regards
Nic
User avatar
Robert Sample
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 1886
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 1:22 am
Location: Dubuque Iowa
United States of America

Re: Use of Commarea while making a CALL in COBOL CICS program?

Post by Robert Sample »

COBOL CALL statements by default pass values by reference. Hence, the first value passed will be assumed by CICS to be DFHEIBLK and the second DFHCOMMAREA. If you omit these two parameters from your code, at best CICS is going to be updating fields in your user data as if it were DFHEIBLK; at worst, you could bring down the entire CICS region.
Sharad Nikam
Registered Member
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu May 19, 2016 2:14 pm

Re: Use of Commarea while making a CALL in COBOL CICS program?

Post by Sharad Nikam »

nicc wrote: What CICS facilities does USER_PROG use?
That's a simple CICS inquiery screen program.
Sharad Nikam
Registered Member
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu May 19, 2016 2:14 pm

Re: Use of Commarea while making a CALL in COBOL CICS program?

Post by Sharad Nikam »

Robert Sample wrote: COBOL CALL statements by default pass values by reference. Hence, the first value passed will be assumed by CICS to be DFHEIBLK and the second DFHCOMMAREA. If you omit these two parameters from your code, at best CICS is going to be updating fields in your user data as if it were DFHEIBLK; at worst, you could bring down the entire CICS region.
Thanks! Entire CICS can be down just by a program..?
User avatar
Robert Sample
Global Moderator
Global Moderator
Posts: 1886
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 1:22 am
Location: Dubuque Iowa
United States of America

Re: Use of Commarea while making a CALL in COBOL CICS program?

Post by Robert Sample »

Easily - I have seen it happen plenty of times.

[ Post made via iPhone ] Image

Update: many years ago I was a contractor. The client programming manager and a fellow contractor got into an argument about whether or not the 32K limit on DFHCOMMAREA still existed. The programming manager said he'd show us the limit was gone and compiled a program with a 128K DFHCOMMAREA. After he did the newcopy and entered the transaction id that invoked the program, all over the room programmers started yelling "Test CICS just went down".
Post Reply

Create an account or sign in to join the discussion

You need to be a member in order to post a reply

Create an account

Not a member? register to join our community
Members can start their own topics & subscribe to topics
It’s free and only takes a minute

Register

Sign in

Return to “CICS, Middleware and MQ Series.”