You can interact with the terminal by using the converse statement, which presents a text form and responds to the user's input by processing the statement that follows the converse statement. For an overview of the runtime behavior, see Segmentation in text applications and, especially, Behavior of a segmented program on CICS® and IMS.
Although use of a converse statement is relatively simple, you get better performance by using a show statement that returns to the beginning of the same program. Use of a show statement requires a more complicated design because the re-invoked program starts at the first line, and that initial code must analyze whether the program is being invoked at the beginning or in the middle of a user-code interaction.
If a non-conversational EGL-generated program transfers control to an EGL-generated basic program by using a transfer statement of the form transfer to a transaction, and if the statement also transfers a record, the transferred record is not used to initialize the receiving program’s input record, as is the case in other environments. Instead, the receiving program must read the transferred record from the message queue.
For details on how to interact with IMS control blocks, see EGL support for runtime PCBs and PSBs.
Related concepts
Behavior of a segmented program on CICS or IMS
DL/I database support
EGL support for runtime PSBs and PCBs
Segmentation in text applications
Related tasks
Interacting with terminals in IMS
Using serial files in IMS