In today's environment, COBOL and CICS are the most commonly used technologies in CICS application programs. This chapter will discuss the compilation process for COBOL + CICS application programs.

In addition to the standard COBOL compilation process, there is an extra step known as "CICS Translation," which translates CICS commands. The diagram below illustrates the steps involved in the CICS compilation process -

Overall, the COBOL + CICS compilation JCL will has 3 steps and those are -

• CICS Translation
• COBOL Compilation
• COBOL Link edit

CICS Translation -

CICS integrated translator can translate and compile CICS source code in a single step. Compilers that support the integrated translator that converts EXEC CICS commands into comments and generates CALL statements appropriate to the CICS language.

Application development is faster with the integrated translator because no separate translation step is required. The generated listing contains the source statements and the CICS messages that are included in the compiler listing.

COBOL Compilation -

Compilation is an important process of converting high-level program code (COBOL) to low-level code, which is a machine-level language that only a machine can understand.

This is one of the most important phases of the programming development life cycle. The compiler compiles the source program into an object module.

COBOL Link edit -

The link editor links the object module created by the compilation step as input and creates the executable component for the program called a load module.

Compilation JCL Example -

Below is the sample compilation JCL for compiling COBOL + CICS -

Points to note -

Once the module clean compiled and load module placed in CICS region, we need to do few things to make it ready for execution -

• If the module is linked to any transaction, PCT entry should be completed.
• PPT entry should be completed for the module.
• Issue a new copy to the program to pickup latest load module recently placed in CICS region.
• Once the above steps are completed, you are go to enter the transaction to initiate the module execution.

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