Determining the File Descriptor

To determine the FD for your data, examine a COBOL application that accessed the data through CICS.

The files for the demonstration are in the subdirectory Examples\Visual Studio Integration\Mainframe\CICS in your installation folder. If you completed the CICS tutorial in an alternate directory, use that directory.

Open the demonstration project in:

1. Click File > Open > Project/Solution, browse to your solution name (such as cics.sln), and select it.

   The solution explorer window shows the COBOL files, mapsets, and copy files used for this project.

2. Open the COBOL source file acct01.cbl.
3. Locate a CICS operation that reads in a data record.

   For example, you can do a quick find for the phrase EXEC CICS READNEXT. In this example, you see the statement:

   EXEC CICS READNEXT DATASET('ACCTIX') INTO(ACCTREC)
                  LENGTH(ACCT-LNG) RIDFLD(BRKEY) END-EXEC.
   
   

4. Go to the definition of ACCTREC by placing your cursor on its name and either right-clicking it and clicking Go To Definition or by pressing your <f12> function key.

   The structure of this record is defined in the copybook ACCTREC. If you want to examine this structure, open the file by placing your cursor on its name and right-clicking it and then clicking Open “ACCTREC”.