tablesONLINE/CICS exit programming

The tablesONLINE/CICS software is an optional component of the tableBASE system.

This chapter discusses the interaction between tablesONLINE/CICS and exit programs: what parameters are passed by tablesONLINE/CICS, what can be done, and what parameters are passed back to tablesONLINE/CICS. It also explains the exit programming facilities and includes a sample program. The chapter concludes with a discussion of various exit programming scenarios.

The exit programming facilities of tablesONLINE/CICS are very flexible. You may have tablesONLINE/CICS call an exit program at various times during your use of:

                SYSTEM sign on
                COMMAND LINE / LINE COMMANDS processing
                          TABLE open
                             ROW (ITEM) input
                                FIELD input
                                FIELD output
                             ROW (ITEM) cross-field validation
                             ROW (ITEM) output
                          TABLE store
                          TABLE close
                SYSTEM sign off

Although each line above represents a logically distinct exit point, an application can use just one program for several levels of indentation above. If, for example, exits are required at Table Open, Table Store, and Table Close time, then you can write a single program that branches to perform any of the three functions and place its name in the View Supplementary Information section of the View. This reduces overhead and avoids some potential maintenance problems by allowing the three table-level operations to share common code and data definitions.

In this chapter we consider the terms row and item to be equivalent (although row is the preferred term). In addition, the term item is sometimes used to describe an independent storage area which contains table data for single row retrievals or updates. Also, the terms View and FDT are considered equivalent, although View is the preferred term. In the following sections, some tablesONLINE/CICS exit program variable names use terminology from previous releases (of tablesONLINE/CICS) for backward compatibility with exit programs developed under earlier releases.