C H A P T E R 1 - Introduction to Configuring Sun MTP

C H A P T E R 1

Introduction to Configuring Sun MTP

Because every application environment is unique, every Sun MTP implementation is unique. This guide provides the steps to perform a basic configuration. To learn more about customizing your system for your application environment, refer to the Sun Mainframe Transaction Processing Software Administrator's Guide and the Sun Mainframe Transaction Processing Software Developer's Guide.

This chapter contains the following topics:

Configuration Tasks

Sun MTP Standards

Configuration Tasks

Before you can run Sun MTP, you must define a region environment. After that, you can perform a series of environment-specific configuration tasks.

Defining a Region Environment

Designing and creating a directory structure for your application

Moving programs and data files into the appropriate directories

Building a setup file to set all the environment variables for the region

Defining an Application's Resources

Defining resources in Sun MTP

Setting up control information in the Sun MTP tables

If your application accesses VSAM files, you must also:

Create the VSAM Catalog

Build VSAM files

Configuring UNIX Terminals

Ensuring that you can run your application from a specific type of terminal and keyboard

Configuring Printers

Setting up printers and transient data queues so that the region can communicate with them

Configuring Communications

Configuring intersystem communications (ISC) so that program-to-program communications can take place. Sun MTP supports ISC over SNA and TCP/IP.

Setting up the region so that it can communicate with remote clients

Configuring Optional Products

Setting up the region so that it recognizes and can work with other products, such as relational databases

Sun MTP Standards

This section describes the Sun MTP standards for:

Screen Formats

Function Keys

Data Entry Validation

File Identifiers

The standards of your user applications might be different.

Screen Formats

All data entry screens have four areas as described in the following table.

TABLE 1-1 Screen Formats
Screen Area	Description
Header area (line 1)	Identifies the current screen and contains the current date and time.
Detail area (lines 2 through 20)	Contains menus, data entry screens, and file selection areas.
Response area (line 21)	Normally has underscores (_) across the entire line. When certain operations are performed, such as writing data to disk, this line displays a highlighted message indicating any error conditions. It can also indicate status of the operation.
Function Key Description area (lines 22 through 24)	Lists the available function keys for the screen and the operation performed when a function key is pressed.

FIGURE 1-1 Sun MTP Screen Formats--Example

Screen shot of a typical data entry screen showing the four screen areas: header area, detail area, response area, and function key description area.

Function Keys

The function keys described in the following table perform the specified operations on Sun MTP screens.

TABLE 1-2 Function Keys
Function Key	Action
PF3	Returns to the previous screen. If you changed data on a screen and press this key before saving the changes to disk, this warning is displayed: Table has been modified. Press PF3 if modification is only temporary. Either press PF3 to confirm that you do not want to save the changes or press any other key to perform another operation.
Enter	Modifies the data for the entries currently displayed. You can modify the contents of a screen by typing over the unprotected values and pressing this key. Data is modified only if all fields pass their associated validation tests.
Clear	Clears the screen so you can type a new transaction.
Reset	Resets the system after an operator error, such as typing text in a numeric field.

See Appendix A for keyboard mapping information.

Data Entry Validation

You can type both uppercase and lowercase characters into any data field. Under most conditions, lowercase characters are converted to uppercase. Some data fields accept lowercase characters as valid data. Normally, fields that relate to CICS commands are converted to uppercase; other fields are left as typed. For example, dataset names are converted to uppercase and file names remain as they are typed.

During data entry validation, any fields containing invalid data are highlighted. The cursor is in the first field containing the erroneous data and the following message is displayed in the response area:

Data in field invalid/required

File Identifiers

File identifiers have two parts:

A directory or environment variable that specifies one or more directories

A file name that is the last component of the file identifier

When entering a file identifier, you must conform to the specifications described in the following table:

TABLE 1-3 File Identifiers
File Identifier	Description
Directory	Absolute directory names used in Sun MTP cannot exceed 50 characters. You can use an environment variable preceded by a dollar sign ( $ ) to replace any portion of a path name. For example, the following lines are valid and designate the same directory: `mtp/mtp8/finance/sys` `$KIXSYS` The `$` symbol expands the `KIXSYS` environment variable to its complete value.
Environment variable	Name of a directory or file, or a value; 1 to 14 characters. By convention, environment variables are in uppercase.
File name	Sun MTP file names are 1 to 14 characters, including any extension.