Remotely defined in the local region.

[Ashish Pawar]

Hi I am new to CICS and queues. Recently I read that a queue is "remotely defined in the local region", what does this sentence mean?

If a queue is defined in a CICS region, will not it be always local to it? How can it is defined in the region but is remote? Can someone please explain that. Would appreicate.

[Robert Sample]

CICS supports multiregion operation (MRO). This is a facility whereby resources can be defined in region A but can be used in region B. MRO includes TOR (terminal owning region), AOR (application owning region), and DOR (data owning region). So a queue can be defined in region A but be used in region B (so it has a remote definition but is used locally). There is a LOT to MRO, so if you're interested in it you can search the web and read the many, many manual pages IBM has produced about MRO.

[Ashish Pawar]

I read it. Not all of them it's too heavy as subject. But I could not make a simple question to answer, like why do we require this concept in CICS? Is it related to Channels/containers in any way?

[Robert Sample]

MRO became available to CICS in 1980 (yes, 40 years ago). This predates channels / containers by many years. The reasons MRO was developed were numerous, but included distributing CICS workload across regions, virtual storage constraint relief, better utilization of multiprocessors, allowing dedicated resources in one region, and separation of test and production.

[Ashish Pawar]

Thanks Robert.