What are the pros/cons of running a Natural/DB2 under TSO versus CICS?
From a system point of view, your System Programmer will tell you that TSO requires considerably more resource utilization than CICS. As a result, the maximum number of concurrent TSO users will be severely restricted.
Typically, developers are allowed to configure terminal emulators, allowing TSO sessions on different 3270 models. CICS is often restricted to Model 2. I like to use a Model 4 for Natural, giving me an 80x43 screen instead of 80x24 - almost double the space in the program editor.
Regarding Natural, I can’t speak to the DB2 flavor, but for vanilla Natural, some features are not (readily) available with CICS, as they are with TSO, Com-plete, and CMS. Two that come to mind:
- . WORK files can be allocated/defined prior to Natural start-up, and made accessible to the Natural session.
. Terminal command %H can be used to route an active on-line report to a printer.