External Action Blocks › Create External Action Blocks in HE

Create External Action Blocks in HE

You are responsible for writing, compiling, and link-editing the external subroutine and making it available to the application. The external subroutines can be written in any language, but must follow specific conventions so that they interface properly with CA Gen generated programs.

To ensure that these requirements are met, CA Gen generates a COBOL program stub that you can use as a base for modification. The stub defines the runtime parameters that are passed from the calling procedure step or action block to the External Action Block. It also defines the import and export views of the External Action Block to match those of the calling procedure step or action block.

The requirements includes:

• Supplying a member name for the External Action Block
• Generating the External Action Block stub
• Modifying the stub to use the appropriate parameters and to call or to contain the external subroutine logic
• Resolving the External Action Block if it uses embedded SQL
• Generating and installing the procedure step that calls the External Action Block