If you choose not to use QMF procedures, you must decide whether your program will communicate with QMF through the callable interface or the command interface.
The QMF callable interface is an interface that you use to create an application invoked outside of QMF, which starts a QMF session and sends commands to QMF for execution.
The callable interface is available for all environments supported in QMF. It is a Common Programming Interface for query in the z/OS, VM, and VSE environments, and is available for various languages as shown in Table 1.
CICS under z/OS | CICS under VSE | CMS | TSO | APPC | SRPI | Native z/OS batch | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
assembler | × | × | × | × | × | × | × |
C | × | × | × | × | × | × | × |
COBOL | × | × | × | × | × | × | × |
FORTRAN | × | × | × | × | × | ||
PL/I | × | × | × | × | × | × | × |
REXX | × | × | × | × | × |
For more information about the callable interface, see The callable interface.
The QMF command interface allows you to create applications that submit commands to QMF from an ISPF dialog. QMF communicates with the ISPF dialog through the ISPF variable pool using this command interface.
The command interface is only available when ISPF is available; it is not available in CICS.
For more information about the QMF command interface, see Using the command interface for applications.
The differences between the callable interface and the command interface are:
Callable interface:
Command interface: