IBM® Customer Information Control System (CICS®) Explorer is the new face of CICS Integration point for CICS tooling with rich CICS views, data, and methods. Are you looking for new ways to accelerate the transfer of knowledge, skills, and best practices to the next generation of technical staff and experts? Do you need to maintain productivity and protect service-levels? CICS ExplorerTM and System z® lead the way to platform simplification. IBM CICS Explorer has a common, intuitive, Eclipse-based environment for architects, developers, administrators, system programmers, and operators. The task-oriented views provide integrated access to a broad range of data and control capabilities, and it also has powerful, context-sensitive resource editors. Integration point for CICS TS, CICS Tools, CICS TG, PD Tools, and Rational® Tools are extensible by independent software vendors (ISV), system integrators (SI), and customers who use our Software Development Kit. In this IBM Redbooks® publication, we focus on the new CICS Explorer. The first part of the book is an overview of the CICS Explorer along with all of the CICS Tools' plug-ins. In the second part of the book, we focus on several scenarios in which you can use the CICS Explorer with the CICS Tools plug-ins to resolve various problems.

The IBM® CICS® Interdependency Analyzer (CICS IA®) is a runtime tool for use with IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS®. CICS IA allows both system programmers and application developers to get an understanding of the relationships and dependencies of your CICS applications and the environment on which they run. By analyzing data collected by CICS IA, you can make changes to your environment in a safe and controlled but timely manner to address changing demands on your business applications. In this IBM Redbooks® publication, we first provide a detailed overview of what CICS IA is and what business issues it addresses before we review how to configure CICS IA to collect the data that you require with the minimum provenance impact. We then show how you can analyze this data to assist with day-to-day application changes and major projects such as application onboarding.

The IBM® CICS® Transaction Server for z/VSE® (CICS TS for z/VSE) 2.1 provides functions to improve application programming, system programming, system management, and data security and availability. With CICS TS for z/VSE 2.1, you can use the extended functionality of Basic Security Manager. CICS TS for z/VSE 2.1 can be administrated by the IBM CICS Explorer® function on a workstation, which allows CICS management in a convenient way. This IBM Redbooks® publication provides information to help you install, tailor, and configure the CICS TS for z/VSE 2.1 product. The book is intended for IBM z/VSE customers and IBM technical personnel who are responsible for planning and migrating to IBM z/VSE 6.1 and CICS TS for z/VSE 2.1. The book also provides information to help you understand the affect of migrating to CICS TS for z/VSE 2.1. It provides detailed guidance and samples for installing and configuring CICS TS for z/VSE 2.1. Also included in the book is a description of the CICS TS for z/VSE 2.1 features and capabilities and the affect of removing obsolete functions. The book also covers security and performance issues and provides samples for first level problem determination through the use of memory dumps or the use of trace tools.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides information about the new Java virtual machine (JVM) server technology in IBM CICS® Transaction Server for z/OS® V4.2. We begin by outlining the many advantages of its multi-threaded operation over the pooled JVM function of earlier releases. The Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) is described and we highlight the benefits OSGi brings to both development and deployment. Details are then provided about how to configure and use the new JVM server environment. Examples are included of the deployment process, which takes a Java application from the workstation Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) with the IBM CICS Explorer® software development kit (SDK) plug-in, through the various stages up to execution in a stand-alone CICS region and an IBM CICSPlex® environment. The book continues with a comparison between traditional CICS programming, and CICS programming from Java. As a result, the main functional areas of the Java class library for CICS (JCICS) application programming interface (API) are extensively reviewed. Further chapters are provided to demonstrate interaction with structured data such as copybooks, and how to access relational databases by using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) and Structured Query Language for Java (SQLJ). Finally, we devote a chapter to the migration of applications from the pooled JVM model to the new JVM server run time.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication, intended for architects, application developers, and system programmers, describes how to design and implement Java web-based applications in an IBM CICS® Liberty JVM server. This book is based on IBM CICS Transaction Server V5.3 (CICS TS) using the embedded IBM WebSphere® Application Server Liberty V8.5.5 technology. Liberty is an asset to your organization, whether you intend to extend existing enterprise services hosted in CICS, or develop new web-based applications supporting new lines of business. Fundamentally, Liberty is a composable, dynamic profile of IBM WebSphere Application Server that enables you to provision Java EE technology on a feature-by-feature basis. Liberty can be provisioned with as little as the HTTP transport and a servlet web container, or with the entire Java EE 6 Web Profile feature set depending on your application requirements. This publication includes a Technology Essentials section for architects and application developers to help understand the underlying technology, an Up-and-Running section for system programmers implementing the Liberty JVM server for the first time, and a set of real-life application development scenarios.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides an example approach of an agile IT team that implements development and operations (DevOps) capabilities into an IBM CICS® application. Several tools are used to show how teams can achieve transparency, traceability, and automation in their application lifecycle with the assistance of all the stakeholders to deliver high-quality application changes that meet the requirements. The application changes that are built highlight the composable and dynamic nature of using CICS, the Liberty JVM runtime server, and IBM UrbanCodeTM Deploy, which allows developers to get their applications running quickly by using only the programming model features that are required for their applications. The target audience for this publication is IT developers, managers, and architects, and project managers, test managers and developers, and operations managers and developers.

CICS® ExplorerTM is the latest significant evolution in the management and analysis of your CICS environment. It is a statement of intent from the CICS Development organization, which is determined to ensure you can manage your CICS estate in a simple and easily extensible way, using a combination of the following approaches: Tried and trusted CICS expertise and technology The widely accepted user interfaces and integration power of the open source Eclipse platform Web 2.0 and RESTful programming (this technology underpins the CICS Explorer concept) This IBM® Redbooks® publication shows how you can use the extensible design of CICS Explorer to complement the functionality already provided, with added functionality tailored to the needs of your business. We show you how to perform the following tasks: Install the CICS plug-in SDK into your eclipse environment Develop a simple plug-in for the CICS Explorer Deploy the plug-in into CICS Explorer We provide several useful examples of plug-ins that we developed during the residency using the methodology we describe. The starting point for the book is that you already have CICS Explorer installed and configured with connectivity to your CICS region or CICSPlex®, and that you are looking for ways to customize CICS Explorer.

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, you will gain an appreciation of the IBM CICS® Transaction Gateway (CICS TG) product suite, based on key criteria, such as capabilities, scalability, platform, CICS server support, application language support, and licensing model. Matching the requirements to available infrastructure and hardware choices requires an appreciation of the choices available. In this book, you will gain an understanding of those choices, and will be capable of choosing the appropriate CICS connection protocol, APIs for the applications, and security options. You will understand the services available to the application developer when using a chosen protocol. You will then learn about how to implement CICS TG solutions, taking advantage of the latest capabilities, such as IPIC connectivity, high availability, and Dynamic Server Selection. Specific scenarios illustrate the usage of CICS TG for IBM z/OS®, and CICS TG for Multiplatforms, with CICS Transaction Server for z/OS and IBM WebSphere® Application Server, including connections in CICS, configuring simple end-to-end connectivity (all platforms) with verification for remote and local mode applications, and adding security, XA support, and high availability.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication focuses on developing Web service applications in IBM CICS®. It takes the broad view of developing and modernizing CICS applications for XML, Web services, SOAP, and SOA support, and lays out a reference architecture for developing these kinds of applications. We start by discussing Web services in general, then review how CICS implements Web services. We offer an overview of different development approaches: bottom-up, top-down, and meet-in-the-middle. We then look at how you would go about exposing a CICS application as a Web service provider, again looking at the different approaches. The book then steps through the process of creating a CICS Web service requester. We follow this by looking at CICS application aggregation (including 3270 applications) with IBM Rational® Application Developer for IBM System z® and how to implement CICS Web Services using CICS Cloud technology. The first part is concluded with hints and tips to help you when implementing this technology. Part two of this publication provides performance figures for a basic Web service. We investigate some common variables and examine their effects on the performance of CICS as both a requester and provider of Web services.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication takes an existing IBM 3270-COBOL-VSAM application and describes how to use the features of IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS®) Transaction Server (CICS TS) cloud enablement. Working with the General Insurance Application (GENAPP) as an example, this book describes the steps needed to monitor both platform and application health using the CICS Explorer CICS Cloud perspective. It also shows you how to apply threshold policy and measure resource usage, all without source code changes to the original application. In addition, this book describes how to use multi-versioning to safely and reliably apply and back out application changes. This Redbooks publication includes instructions about the following topics: How to create a CICS TS platform to manage and reflect the health of a set of CICS TS regions, and the services that they provide to applications How to quickly get value from CICS TS applications, by creating and deploying a CICS TS application for an existing user application How to protect your CICS TS platform from erroneous applications by using threshold policies How to deploy and run multiple versions of the same CICS TS application on the same CICS TS platform at the same time, enabling a safer migration from one application version to another, with no downtime How to measure application resource usage, enabling a comparison of the performance of different application versions, and chargeback based on application use This book describes how CICS TS cloud enablement uses existing operational facilities, including monitoring, events, transaction tracking, CICS TS bundles, and IBM CICSPlex® System Manager (CICSPlex SM), to integrate with existing deployment and management processes.