Accessing OSI virtual terminal services from Cobol application programs

Application programs access Open System Interconnection services through a Programmatic Interface. This Programmatic Interface should be made available to users of high level languages most commonly used for programming applications. This paper presents a Cobol oriented programmatic interface giving access to the Presentation Virtual Terminal Services of CII-HB and HIS Distributed Systems Architecture, DSA, which is built in accordance with ISO reference model for OSI. The virtual terminal model used is described in terms of presentation objects and their attributes, as well as the operations performed on these objects. A correspondance is given between this model and the COBOL communication model.