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CICS(Customer Information Control System), a transaction system that runs primarily on IBM mainframe.The CICS transport can be used to call mainframe programs by sending XML messages to Mule.Mainframe programs have fixed-length record layouts for input/output.
XML, on the other hand does not have length-restriction for an element's value.

The CICS transport provides transformers to transform messages between XML and fixed-length format.

The typical steps (inside Mule) to send XML messages to mainframe are as follows:

XML messages are received by Mule from the client (e.g: a JMS queue).
The mainframe operation to be invoked is detected from the XML message.
The XML message is converted into a fixed-length mainframe format.
The mainframe program is invoked via CICS.
The fixed-length binary response is converted into XML.
The XML response is sent back to the client (e.g: the JMS reply queue).

An example XML message received from a client is shown below:

Request XML Message

<sample-command xmlns="http://ogis-ri.co.jp/SAMPLE-COMMAND">
        <customer-info>
           <customer-no></customer-no>
           <customer-name>Jones</customer-name>
           <customer-address>Boston</customer-address>
           <date>20080401</date>
        <customer-info>
     </sample-command>

The XML is transformed into fixed-length format required by mainframe.

Fixed-length request message

<          \+Jones               \+Boston                                 \+20080401>
| | | | |
| | | | |
 -+cust-no+-\--customer-name \--\--+\--\-+-+customer-address+-\---------------\--\|--date-\-

A fixed-length message is received from mainframe.

Response fixed-length message

<00002+20080401+0000050001+Bill Jones +1024, Parker Road, Boston, USA         \+006000+0000060001+Matt Jones         \+101, Miller Road, Boston, USA          \+001000+>

The fixed-length message is transformed into XML as shown below.

Response XML Message

<sample-response xmlns="http://ogis-ri.co.jp/SAMPLE-RESPONSE">
  <no-of-records>2</no-of-records>
  <date>20080401</date>
  <customer-list>
    <customer-no>0000050001</customer-no>
    <customer-name>Bill Jones</customer-name>
    <customer-address>1024, Parker Road, Boston,USA</customer-address>
    <customer-charge>6000</customer-charge>
  </customer-list>
  <customer-list>
    <customer-no>0000060001</customer-no>
    <customer-name>Matt Jones</customer-name>
    <customer-address>101, Miller Road, Boston,USA</customer-address>
    <customer-charge>1000</customer-charge>
  </customer-list>
</sample-response>

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