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CICS Month Trivia

Jul 14, 2025

CICS, Trivia

CICS Month Trivia

Sonja Soderlund

Sonja Soderlund is an Oregon-based B2B freelance writer. Whether writing about mainframe computers, educational technology, or sustainable retail, she strives to bring clarity to complex issues. Connect with her or LinkedIn.

It’s CICS month at Planet Mainframe! That means we’ll spend some time this month exploring the system that’s been the bedrock of enterprise transaction processing since the 1960s.

CICS grew out of the idea of Ben Riggens, an IBM systems engineer working at Virginia Electric Power Co., who saw the need for a better way to handle interactive applications. Since then, it has become a trusted platform for handling high-volume transaction workloads across industries like banking, insurance, and retail. Known for its stability and scalability, CICS integrates with modern APIs and web services, while continuing to leverage the robust IBM mainframe infrastructure. 

This quiz will help you test your general knowledge of CICS, its history, and its pivotal role in enterprise computing – while offering a chance to learn something new!

1. Which is not one of the three steps of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)?

 
 
 
 

2. Defensive pessimism can best be described as:

 
 
 
 

3. What was the most common method of connecting to the mainframe from home in the years prior to the pandemic?

 
 
 
 

4. What are the possible benefits of a mainframe with a web interface, according to Eddels?

 
 
 
 

1 Comment

  1. Captain Uday Prasad
    Captain Uday Prasad on Jul 18, 2025 at 7:55 pm

    This was an excellent revision of Cics.
    Let’s add to it –
    A typical pseudo conversational Cics program
    The unique feature of Cics to differentiate between first time entry into a program with the other subsequent entries.
    The concept of EIB fields.
    The difference between Return and return with transids.
    The concept of tsq and tdq
    And last but not the least the Cics web service .

    Reply

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