CICS - Interview Questions
These CICS Interview Questions have been designed especially to get you acquainted with the nature of questions you may encounter during your interview for the subject of CICS. As per our experience, good interviewers hardly plan to ask any particular question during an interview – normally questions start with some basic concept of the subject and later, they continue based on further discussion and how you answer −
ASKTIME command is used to access current date and time.
MOVE -1 to FIELD + L field. Mention CURSOR option in the SEND command.
EXEC CICS UNLOCK END-EXEC.
For Skipper field, use ASKIP and for stopper field use PROT.
Mention FSET option in DFHMDF or set it dynamically in the program using FIELD+A attribute field.
CEDA transaction is used to gain accessibility to control tables.
Terminal Control Table.
Mapset is a collection of maps which are linked edited together to form a load module. It should have a PPT entry. It can have names from 1 to 7 chars.
The CICS translator converts the EXEC CICS commands into call statements for a specific programming language.
The XCTL command transfers the control to an application program at the same logical level and it does not expect the control back, while the LINK command passes the control to an application program at the next logical level and expects the control back.
CICS automatically provides some system-related information to each task in a form of EXEC Interface Block (EIB), which is unique to the CICS command level. We can use all the fields of EIB in our application programs right away.
The EIBRCODE tells the application program if the last CICS command was executed successfully or not.
The next time the end-user presses an attention key, CICS will start the transaction specified in the TRANSID option.
To specify the paragraph or program label to which the control is to be passed if the “handle condition” occurs.
The INTO option moves the information in the TIOA into the reserved specified area, while the SET option simply returns the address of the TIOA to the specified BLL cell or “address-of” a linkage section.
The DFHMDF macro defines fields, literal, and characteristics of a field.
The ASKTIME command is used to request the current date and time. Whereas, the EIBTIME field ha the value at the task initiation time.
The TCT defines the characteristics of each terminal with which CICS can communicate.
A deadlock occurs when a task is waiting for a resource held by another task which, in turn, is waiting for a resources held by the first task.
MRO is the mechanism by which different CICS address spaces with in the same CPU can communicate and share resources.
A program is considered reentrant if more than one task can execute the code without interfering with the other tasks execution.
The common work area is a storage area that can be accessed by any task in a CICS system.
EIBAID is a key field in the execute interface block; it indicates which attention key the user pressed to initiate the task.
BMS stands for Basic Map Support. It allows you to code assembler level programs to define screens.
What is Next?
Further, you can go through the examples which you have practiced with the subject and make sure you are able to speak confidently on them. If you are a fresher, then the interviewer does not expect you to answer very complex questions. Hence you should have a strong hold over the fundamental concepts of the subject.
