9% of all work performed in IS departments involved in manipulation or maintenance of the data files. Host based systems, EDI transactions, file transfers and client/server all increase the demand. Yet application programmers, system programmers, and operators struggle along with an incomplete set of tools. It's like trying to saw wood with a saw that has no teeth. The growing complexities of today's information systems environments coupled with reassignment of valuable IS resources are having profound effects. This places new emphasis on management and control of files accessed through CICS.
CICS-FileServ is an on-line menu-driven system utility, operating under CICS, that provides the means to dynamically create and maintain all file definitions required by CICS by using the FileServ interface to RDO.
The FileServ interface greatly simplifies the process for the user by doing the following:
In addition to the RDO interface, FileServ will automatically close and deactivate files which have not been accessed in a specified amount of time (specified by the option table) thereby releasing storage and resources tied up by the unused file.
A powerful batch interface system is provided which allows batch processing to run concurrently with CICS activity.
A file utility is provided which allows manipulation of CICS files: files can be searched for hex/character strings, data may be replaced, files may be merged or created, records can be added, deleted, or modified, record lengths can be modified, and records may be printed. This very abbreviated description of the file maintenance system will be expanded later in the manual.
Files, program names and transaction IDs can be placed in a FileServ “family” file and operated on by family name. For example, up to ninety files can be opened by simply opening the family name; or all transactions that access a given file could be disabled by disabling the family name containing the transaction IDs.