Lengths of the CICS program input and output data

CICS® ONC RPC needs to know the length of the CICS program input and output data for each 4-tuple.

For each 4-tuple, the lengths may be defined in one of three places:
  • In the connection manager if the lengths do not vary from call to call. You specify the lengths in the connection manager and specify NO for the Getlengths attribute of the 4-tuple. In this case Getlengths is not called.
  • In Getlengths if the lengths do not vary from call to call, returning the values in the glength_server_input_data_len and glength_server_output_data_len output fields. In the connection manager you specify YES for the Getlengths attribute of the 4-tuple, and leave the length fields blank.

    In either of these first two cases, if Decode is specified for the 4-tuple, the Decode function can change the lengths.

  • In Decode , if the lengths of the data structures vary from call to call. You return the lengths on each call by using the decode_server_input_data_len and decode_server_output_data_len output fields. The lengths specified with the connection manager or Getlengths are supplied as inputs to Decode in these fields.