What does PCB stands for in IMS?
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Process control Block
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Program Control Block
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Program Communication Block
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Process Communication Block
In IBM's IMS environment, PCB stands for Program Communication Block. It defines the interface between an application program and the IMS database, specifying what data the program can access. Process Control Block (A) is an operating system concept, while Process Communication Block (D) doesn't exist in IMS terminology.
In IBM's IMS (Information Management System), a PCB (Program Communication Block) is the control block that defines an application program's view of and access path to the IMS database or message queue — it's generated from a PSB (Program Specification Block) at bind time and used at runtime to issue DL/I calls. 'Process Control Block' and 'Process/Program Communication Block' variants are distractors that don't match IMS terminology; the correct, IBM-documented expansion is Program Communication Block.