Introduction to TSO and REXX APIs

Course Number:  628-TF
Recommended Duration:  2 days

Intended Audience
Applications and systems programmers, who need to know how to use the facilities of TSO and REXX from programs written in Assembler, COBOL, PL/I, or C.

Course Overview
This course covers how to issue TSO commands and requests for REXX services from programs written in COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, and C ("API" stands for "Application Programming Interface").  There are eight standard hands-on exercises and one optional hands-on exercise.

Objectives
"APIs" stands for "Application Programming Interfaces"; students who complete this course will be able to design and maintain applications using native TSO commands and the powerful REXX capability of TSO.  The techniques taught in this class might be helpful in writing mainframe-based server applications.

Prerequisites
At the very least, the student entering this course should have experience in using REXX in the TSO environment and in writing programs in one of these languages: Assembler, COBOL, PL/I, C.

Topics

• Passing arguments to and receiving parameters in compiled programs running in batch and native TSO

• Issuing TSO commands from compiled programs (IKJEFTSR service)

• Calling programs from an exec

• Accessing, updating, and creating REXX variables from compiled programs running under TSO (IKJCT441 service)

• Working with DB2 data from an exec

• REXX dynamic program linkages (ADDRESS LINK, ATTACH, LINKPGM, ATTCHPGM, LINKMVS, ATTCHMVS)

• Accessing, updating, and creating REXX variables from a program running in a non-TSO/E-integrated address space (IRXEXCOM service)