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[saravanpm]

Hi,

Is there a way to call a web application from either CICS application or a Rexx program.

I need to call a web page, do some processing get the results in the web page and i need to key in this result manually into CICS screen.

Is there a way to do this and how? If so which version of CICS supports this.

If not, is that possible to do the same from REXX program?

Thanks,
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Saravanan

[archowdhury]

Hi Saravan,
A CICS program can take inputs from a web page. But ideally what happens is that the web page takes user inputs and passes them through some middleware like MQseries. This input then comes to the mainframe side which your program receives and processes.

When you return something to the web frontend that has to go through the middleware.

I don't think there is any specific version of CICS which you need to do that. I am not sure how to do the same with ReXX.

Hope that makes things a little clear.

~Amit

[semigeezer]

CICS can call outbound web services from V3.2 (?) on but web services use a specific, well defined format. If you want to call web pages of any format, you would have to send the requests and parse the responses yourself as well as handle timeouts, errors, etc. You might want to write some scripting at a PC that can do the web work using programs like wget, java, perl, rexx or whatever, then use your 3270 emulator's macro facility to enter the results into CICS screens. You might also run the web fetch/parse from the Unix size of z/OS and find a way to feed the web results into CICS in batch.
If you have control of the web page, create real web services and use CICS directly.

Be sure to check with your security group to be sure this is done in a secure way (eg, not hardcoding passwords, not making the apps available outside your org, etc).
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