2.1 Common Gateway Interface

The Common Gateway Interface is an application programming interface. A CGI program can be written in any language; the only requirement is that it sends and receives information in a standard format. More information on CGI is available at hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/overview.html

A CGI program, executing as a MVS task, links to a CICS application using the external CICS interface. The external CICS interface provides two forms of programming interface:

• the EXCI CALL interface consists of six commands to allocate / open sessions to a CICS system, issue DPL requests, and Close / de-allocate sessions. Since the Initialize_User and Allocate_Pipe commands are only issued once near the beginning of a program, and the Deallocate_Pipe is issued once on completion of all DPL, it is more efficient where multiple calls are issued.
• the EXEC CICS interface performs all six commands of the EXCI CALL interface in one invocation. This command takes the same form as the CICS application programming interface distributed program link command. As the EXEC CICS LINK command is easier to code, it should be used where a low number of calls are made.

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