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C

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

W3C specification for controlling the "style" or "layout" of structured documents by means of rules and declarations. There are two CSS specifications CSS1 and the more advanced CSS2. Most browser software supports CSS, but support is not entirely consistent and not all rules and declarations are supported. However, browser software support for CSS is constantly improving.

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

The part of the computer (machine) that includes the circuits that control the interpretation and execution of the machine instructions.

Central Processor (CP)

The part of the computer (machine) that contains the sequencing and processing facilities for instruction execution, initial program load and other machine operations.

Central Processor Complex (CPC)

A physical collection of hardware that includes central storage one or more Central Processors (CP), timers and channels.

class

In the context of object-oriented design or programming; a model template that can be instantiated to create objects with a common definition and, therefore, common properties, operations and behaviour. An object is an instance of a class.

client

In the context of computing; a computer system or process that requests a service of another computer system or process that is typically referred to as a server.

client/server

A distributed application design model in which the frontend transaction (the one that initiates the conversation) is called the client and controls the course of the conversation. The server receives a request from the client, processes it and returns the results.

CLIST

A high-level procedural language used in MVS systems.

COmmon Business-Oriented Language (COBOL)

A high-level, "English-like" programming language designed for business data processing applications.

Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)

An architectural standard proposed by the Object Management Group (OMG), an industry standards organisation for creating object descriptions that are portable among programming languages and execution platforms.

Communication Area (COMMAREA)

A CICS area (storage) that is used to pass data between programs, tasks and even CICS systems.

constructor

In object-oriented design or programming; a special class method that has the same name as the class and is used to construct and possibly initialise objects of its class type.

Customer Information Control System (CICS)

IBM's general purpose online transaction processing OLTP software. It is an application server product, which runs under a number of both IBM and non-IBM operating systems. It integrates all the basic software services required by OLTP applications with a rich set of resources and management services in a highly available, reliable and scalable manner.

CICS has been "evolving" for well over 30 years and the most current mainframe CICS is "CICS^® Transaction Server for z/OS", which not only provides the more traditional OLTP services, but is also a full function Web Application Server and full function Enterprise Java Bean Server. When new technology becomes available CICS generally very quickly provides support for that technology.

CICSplex

A CICS complex (CICSplex) is a group of inter-communicating CICS systems. Those systems can be on the same machine, on different machines within a sysplex, on different machines outside the scope of a sysplex, and on entirely different platforms and operating systems. In contrary to a sysplex the scope of a CICSplex is not restricted by and does not require a Coupling Facility (CF).

CICSPlex^® System Manager (CICSPlex SM or CPSM)

IBM software product and non-exclusive component of CICS^® Transaction Server. It monitors, manages and controls the environment and workload of a CICSplex.

CICSplex SM provides a Single System Image (SSI) for the management and operation of the CICSplex. It also provides two powerful APIs, two user interfaces (End User Interface and Web User Interface), facilities for resource and workload management and also Real Time Analysis (RTA).

CICS System Definition (CSD) Dataset

The CSD is a VSAM KSDS used by CICS as a repository for resource definitions required by CICS itself and the applications running under it. The CSD can be updated online or in batch. The CSD is used at initialisation (cold or initial only) to create in storage tables for the use and control of the resources.

CICS Transaction Gateway (CTG)

Provides a comprehensive set of Java based web server facilities for access to CICS applications from a web browser.

CICS provides a number of possibilities and alternatives for accessing applications from a web browser, CTG is just one of those possibilities.

CICS Web Interface (CWI) or CICS Web Support (CWS)

CWS (formerly known as CWI) is a collection of CICS resources supporting direct access to CICS transaction processing from web browsers.

Coupling Facility (CF)

The Coupling Facility is a special Logical Partition (LPAR), which provides high-speed caching, list structure and locking functions in a Parallel Sysplex environment.