GSE UK conference – let’s chat!
This Wednesday, sees the start of the Guide Share Europe (GSE) UK conference and I’m going to be there along with quite a few other IBM Hursley employees from the CICS team. Assuming there is reasonable internet at the venue, I’m hoping to take some time to blog about the event while I’m there. I’m hoping to get chatting with a quite a few of you as well while I am there so if you want to meet-up for a chat, please get in touch via the blog or on twitter (@chrishodgins), I’ll try to check both as much as I can during the conference. Other than that I should be lurking around at most of the CICS presentations.
The conference has a nice varied agenda covering 9 different streams so there should be lots to take in! The streams are:
- CICS
- IMS
- DB2
- Enterprise Security
- MQ
- Large Systems Working Group
- Network Management Working Group
- Software Asset Management
- New Technologies
I only managed to convince one other sucker colleague from the CICS team to join me for a mugshot on the blog to make it easier to track us down. So without further ado, keep your eyes peeled for one lanky Scotsman (that’s me – left) and Kevin Bowkett (on the right).
Chris Hodgins
Kevin Bowkett
Kevin is a first line manager for CICS with responsibility for Web Services, SCA, Web 2.0 and Java. He has the pleasure of taking the first CICS presentation on Wednesday morning, which is the CICS TS 4.1 overview. This is definitely one to catch so you have a nice grounding for the rest of the CICS presentations over the 2 days.
On the Thursday afternoon, I’ll be presenting on CICS Explorer aka “The new face of CICS”. So please feel free to grab me at any time or after the presentation to have a chat about it. I’m primarily a CICSPlex SM developer and lately one of the main developers on the CICS Management Client Interface. So if you need to get your head around any of that lot you know where I am. I’m happy to talk about anything else CICS related as well.
Both Kevin and myself will be about on Wednesday and Thursday. So see you there!
| CICS | IMS | DB2 | Enterprise Security | MQ | Large Systems Working Group | Network Management Working Group | Software Asset Management | New Technologies |
UK Student Mainframe contest
If you are reading this blog you are probably working somewhere that uses IBM mainframes and may be interested in helping to ensure that university students have had a taste of the mainframe (or -sorry Chris – proper computing as I call it).
So if you or your organisation has relationships with UK universities, then please make sure that they are aware of the upcoming UK Student Mainframe Contest. This is a really good way for UK university students to learn about System z.
If students participate and they get through the early challenges they will get their mitts on CICS and other z/OS software… Though the chance of winning a Sony Playstation 3 might be more of an incentive than getting first hand use of CICS 
.
CICS Explorer Security – Basic Authentication
If you are using a CICS Management Interface (CMCI) connection with CICS Explorer and are getting security problems due to the the wrong userid – typically the CICS default user – is getting used for the checks, the likely cause of the problem is that the TCPIPSERVICE you have set up is not defined appropriately.
CICSPlex SM Web User Interface users, should not have this problem as the TCPIPSERVICE used for CMCI users is automatically created with settings appropriate for the environment, but if you are an SMSS (’single server’) user, and have configured your own TCPIPSERVICE, perhaps using the IBM supplied group (DFH£WU) as a model, then if the CICS is running with SEC=YES, then you need to update the TCPIPSERVICE used by the CMCI so that it specifies Authenticate(Basic):
If you do NOT run with Basic authentication on the TCPIPSERVICE used by the CMCI, your userid/password credentials will not be checked by CICS and the requests that are run in the CICS via the CMCI / CICS Explorer will be associated with the CICS default user.
CICS Explorer on Mac OS X
Shhh …now please keep this to yourself as I don’t really want to admit it ….
I am about to out myself here, but I like to use Mac OS X.
There I said it. But please don’t hold it against me!
I also like to use CICS Explorer, so that means I have a dilemma… Because, officially, the supported CICS Explorer platforms are:
- Microsoft Windows Vista
- Microsoft Windows XP (32-bit)
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 (32-bit)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux V5 (Intel®) (32-bit)
Mac OS X is missing from that list!
If you are prepared to run with an unsupported environment for CICS Explorer, it is possible to get CICS Explorer running on Mac OS X. That is the aim of this post.
CICS Explorer & CMCI/CICSPlex SM API support for CSD resources
CICS TS 4.1 APAR PK90112 closed last week. This APAR extends the CICSPlex SM API to provide access to CICS CSD resources.
Because the CICSPlex SM API model is used for the CMCI, and the SMSS (Single Server), this means that if you are a CICS TS 4.1 user, then once you have installed the PTFs for PK90112 (UK50340,UK50319,UK50341) and upgraded CICS Explorer to 1.0.0.2, you will be able to work with definitions in the CSD. This will work if you are using CICSPlex SM or the SMSS capabilities of the CMCI.
How does it work?
In the ‘CICSplex Repositories’ tab within CICS Explorer, if you have a CICSplex selected, then the CICS resources selected from the Administration menu will show CICSPlex SM BAS resources, for example:
BAS definition
To work with a CSD resource, you need to select a CICS from the ‘CICSplex Repositories’ tab:
CSD definition
Check out the “What’s new in version 1.0.0.2″ within CICS Explorer for more details, and for details on the CMCI / CICSPlex SM API changes, see the DOC ++HOLD on the PTFs.
If you have any questions about the CSD support in CICS Explorer, please fire away over on Developerworks. If you have questions are on using the CMCI or CICSPlex SM API with the CSD support, feel free to ask away here…
Note that this CSD support is only available for CICS TS 4.1 systems, it is not available for earlier releases, even if they are managed by CICSPlex SM 4.1.
CICS TS 2.3 End Of Support today
IBM business partners receive letter of thanks
Congratulations to all of IBM CICS business partners who received letters of thanks at Share! The letters were presented for sponsorship and support of CICS. I have a lovely collection of photos of the awards being handed out below. In order of appearance we have Calvin Fudge of DataDirect, Guy Givens of H&W, Dan Speer of Hostbridge Technologies and Ed Boulay of Sirius.
DataDirect receiving their letter of thanks
H&W receiving their letter of thanks
Hostbridge Technologies receiving their letter of thanks
Sirius receiving their letter of thanks
Also check out the great DataDirect blog, where they have beaten me to it and published a picture of Calvin Fudge, Director of Marketing for the Shadow Product Group receiving their letter of thanks and shaking hands with CICS director Dave Andrews. They even have an image of the letter of thanks on there as well!
Well done to you all!
Update 24/09/09: Fixed some bad grammar (CH)
IBM System z Expo (Oct 5th-9th) in Orlando, Florida
*Puts on marketting hat*
Straight from the home of Mickey Mouse and Universal studios – Orlando, Florida just became even better! Yup, the IBM System z Expo is going to be in town from October 5-9th this year.
You can even get a 10% discount by entering the promotion code A2N when you enroll. Everything you need to get registered and more is right here:
IBM System z Expo – http://bit.ly/16sbo9
From looking at the contents of the conference, there is a lot of new tech in there. Obviously the new System z10 and all the latest skills updates for that is on the list. So too is cloud computing which just about everyone who is cool is trying to work on right now , as well as virtualisation, Parallel Sysplex and Linux making big appearances. Also fairly relevant in the current climate there is also a focus on reducing costs. So how much can they pack in to those 4 1/2 days? Well apparently 300 sessions including hands-on labs, birds of a feather sessions and great opportunities to speak with developers and other subject matter experts.
I suspect you might need to take a couple of days vacation to recover from all of that!
CICS Interdependency Analyzer 3.1
CICS IA 3.1 has been announced today, see here for details.
So what is new in CICS IA 3.1 ?
- CICS TS V4.1 support
- CICS Explorer plugin
- Command Flow
- Natural/Adabas support
- Concurrent Dependency and Affinity data collection
- … and lots more
CICS IA 3.1 is planned to be available on Friday the 4th of September.
Day 2 at Share 2009, Denver
Day two starts on the CICS track with an Event Processing pitch by Scott Clee.
Scott Clee aka Mr January
Who by slide 3 had already had about 12 questions. Mainly these centered around his pronunciation of the word processing (pro-cess-ing or proh-sess-in) – he was backed up by knowledgeable locals in the session – Steve Zemblowski and Ed Addison.
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