CICS online printout split up

edutoit · Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:04 pm

We are experiencing a problem with CICS online printing. Whenever our orders are more than one page long, the printout is split into several chunks. In effect the printout comes through to the printer as separate print jobs which then does a form feed between them. I tried changing the TDQ trigger level, but that does not work. We have also "played" around with some parameters on ESF (CA-Spool), but we are not winning. Is there anybody who have had similar symptoms?

Earl Haigh · Active User Joined: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 475

I'm guessing you need to change the method of printing at your installation.

Base on your description, it appears you are writing a TDQ record for each
page of print and your program at the printer does not have logic to read/print all the records written to the queue.

I would suggest you move away from using trigger TDQ for online printers. Take a look at EXEC CICS START / pass data with with
the start.

You migt also consider some software that would email the orders
as attached' PDF document, and let end user print locally. I've seen
this approach completely eliminate CICS printers.

edutoit · Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:17 am

Earl,

Thanks for your reply. My suspicion was that there is some kind of timeout taking place between CICS and CA-SPOOL, i.e. that CICS is somehow not keeping control of the queue and generates new queues in between or that CA-SPOOL thinks CICS is finished with the queue while printing the order, closing off the queue, only to find CICS wanting to print more and therefore create a new queue.

What do you mean with CICS EXEC START? We are using a packaged system called Walker or e2 as it is called lately from CedAr UK, so we do not do any CICS programming as such. I suspected it had something to do with the collaboration between CICS and CA-SPOOL as described above.

Unfortunately the eMail suggestion will not work as we are still printing orders using impact printers on pre-printed forms.

Thanks a lot,
Etienne

Earl Haigh · Active User Joined: 25 Jul 2006 Posts: 475

Etiene,

The EXEC CICS START won't do you much good if you have outside
vendor software to drive the print requests.

If your Walker/E2 software is using TDQ to route printing then not sure
how that plays with CA-SPOOL software, but would suspect same as you.

However, I think the eMail solution could still work (with the correct email software). The email software we used at client to eliminate CICS printers, provided ability to create PDF' images that looked just like their pre-printed forms.

We used the eMail software both in CICS and Batch processing. (Reports and forms were emailed directly from JES or from CA-SAR)

Significant ROI$$ with pre-printed forms, report printing, mailing, distribution handling, etc.

Regards,
Earl