New SupportPacs for CICS Explorer
If you have been keeping an eye out on IBM_CICS you may have spotted a number of new SupportPacs that allow you to use various IBM PD Tools with CICS Explorer:
You will need the corresponding versions of the z/OS component to use the plugins, but if you have them and CICS Explorer, you are good to go.
Note: these plugins currently require the Windows version of CICS Explorer.
Any questions, or comments on these SupportPacs ask here, or over on Developerworks.
Impact socks on day 4 – AKA The Day the CICS Explorers found a CICS Explorer
Posted on behalf of Nick.
The Tom Rosamilia and Phil Weintraub ‘Ask z Experts’ session was very well attended – below you can see Mr Zemblowski and Catherine Moxey center back row, Steve next to the linen-suited dapper Mr O’Dowd.
Phil W appears to be taking council from Anthony O’Dowd – no doubt asking why, if the Message Broker can handle scoring at events like Wimbledon and the Ryder Cup why can’t we use it to resolve the integration of a hung Parliament in the UK.
Meanwhile is looks like Tom R is praying that our very own Em James knows the answer.
Looks like Sue has found her badge at last – hope she kept hold of her passport! You don’t want to lose your passport while on a business trip…..
Now look who our intrepid explorers have run in to – our real live genuine CICS Explorer Joe Winchester!
That’s just about it now, flights home on Saturday and back to Hursley next week – must start work on that hit single now we’ve absorbed some American culture.
Impact socks on day 3
Posted on behalf of Nick.
Our intrepid CICS Explorers have been checking out the Super Woman’s Reception – I think Tom was expecting lycra and super powers.
While they were there they bumped in to Yvonne Perkins, VP for Enterprise Platform Systems (EPS) who wished to pass their Best of British wishes to her.
After all the socialising it was time to hit the bar and a glass of red, room temperature of course.
Many people you see here are walking around with colourful buttons adorning them (click the image for a close-up).
I must say I liked the Connectivity Cowboy one, although cannot claim any input to that particular badge, but here are the ‘sacks’ of badges waiting to be taken up.
Now it was time to scope out the food – so we went for a closer look.
Then it was off to play the machines.
Some people lose their shirt gambling, this chap lost his head by the look of it!
But Tom and Sue decided to see what they could get with their winnings- is Ford country some kind of music?
Obviously someone got upset because the next thing we know is Security arrived….
We just hope they let us out in time for tomorrows sessions, particularly Phil Wakelins security talk which will include the new feature recently made available for CICS TS V4.1, ID Propagation. Also, what should be an entertaining session from Will Yates – Old stager Vs Greenhorn and a look at how the CICS Explorer can help and for those of you who missed Fraser’s Dynamic Scripting session there’s a repeat!
Impact socks on day 2
Posted on behalf of Nick.
So after the excitement of day one and the 200+ attendees to Dave Andrews opening, our intrepid CICS Explorers get down in to the more detailed technical sessions. To back up the technical sessions, as well as the Ask z Expert sessions, there are demo’s being provided in the IBM System z Software Solutions Suite.
After a quick chat with the CICS Business Partner Supremo, Diane Johnson (@dianegjohnson), it was off to the solution center to see what freebies there were check out all the rich complementary products to the CICS family.
First stop was the Hostbridge stand (doing more with CICS) – nice comfy chair and check out that guitar behind us – looks like a ’57 Les Paul to me
Next we visited those fine people who used to be called Fair Isaac, now known as FICO.
Now with all the new stuff CICS keeps putting in to it’s products it gets increasingly hard to stay up to date with it all, so it’s important that we have companies offering education and instruction of how to take advantage.
So after a hard day around the event it was time for our Explorers to put their feet? up. The ideal solution to this was to relax in one of the bars.
We spent some time analysing what was on offer for Day 3 and saw Catherine Moxey was giving her CICS Events pitch, Fraser had a couple of sessions on CICS Web Services and Service Component Architecture as well as the exciting new announcement from CICS, a session on Dynamic Scripting, there’s an ILOG session from Matt Whitbourne (@mattwhitbourne) and Dan Donnelly as well as further education on CICS Events and implementation.However, in addition to this there is the Tom Rosamilia session at 16:30 Creating an Agile, Dynamic and Cost-Effective Business With System z. and the ‘Ask z Experts 18:00 session with Tom and Phil Weintraub. Another full day ahead – in the words of that classic Greek philosopher, or was he Roman? Actually I think it the Magic Roundabout…. Zebedee “time for bed….”
Impact socks
I’ve been asked to publish this by Nick, who is just too nice to say no to. No socks were harmed (so far) during the creation of this content but I can assure you they will be given a good talking to when they return from their err.. adventures.
So having shamelessly plugged Impact 2010 on YouTube promo video here we are at Impact 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Venetian Hotel is the setting for most of the sessions and two stars of the Impact promotional videos have taken some time out to give a narrative of the first days proceedings. Sue and Tom have flown over from the Hursley Lab in the UK to be present at this years event along with several others speakers and attendees from the SW Lab in England. Dave Andrews, the CICS Development Director kicked off the CICS Track with a family update, featuring two key announcements made last week. The CICS Transaction Gateway V8 and CICS Dynamic Scripting no-charge feature pack.
Sue and Tom also heard about the exciting new Redbook that is available ‘Smarter Banking with CICS Transaction Server and were seen ‘mugging’ up on the book.
Next up it was time for food.
After lunch it was time to take the Solution tour.
Where upon we came across a nice bright shiny z10 – it’s big it’s black, the mainframes back!!
After that they decided to venture off and investigate the experts.
Here we found the resident CICS Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM), Catherine Moxey.
There’s plenty going on here and for Tuesday we have Joe Winchester talking about the CICS Explorer and how it can be extended using the software development kit, Steve Zemblowski talking about upgrading your CICS TS, Catherine (when she’s not in the experts zone) talking about CICS Events, Dan Donnelly talking about ILOG Business Rules solutions and a couple of CICS Tools sessions, one featuring Jim White from Southern California Edison. So before the jet lag kicks in any further it’s off for some rest.
Smarter banking with CICS TS V4.1
IBM System z Software Webcast
Webcast April 21, 2010, 11:00 EDT*** Please note EDT Timing ***
Smarter banking with CICS TS V4.1
The industry and analyst studies are piling up and they all arrive at the same conclusion:
Aligning business and IT efforts can double the productivity gains of those efforts done individually. This alignment also enables businesses to deliver the right information in the right context, tailored to individual needs. But redesigning decades of existing code and solutions is not a viable approach to process improvement. How do you approach building a successful and scalable smarter banking initiative non-invasively?
From an organizational perspective, the enterprise needs horizontal visibility as well as appropriate skills to manage the business and IT operational environments. From a technological perspective, the enterprise needs a platform that will scale with the success of the bank, as well as continuously ensure the integrity and reliability of business processes and services. Providing end-to-end process visibility on a high-performance horizontal transaction processing platform will be a key differentiator for successful enterprises in their drive toward smarter banking.
Join us for this complimentary webcast to learn how IBM CICS® Transaction Server V4.1 can deliver the highly scalable agile infrastructure transaction processing fundamentals needed, along with advanced capabilities like business event emission, and ATOM feeds as a great starting point toward providing a solid foundation for the future.
In this session, we will discuss how CICS TS V4.1 and complementary WebSphere® solutions support smarter banking by helping you:
- Gain insight into business processes and respond by modifying key business applications quickly and with confidence
- Comply with corporate, industry and government policies to manage business risk of critical business applications
- Control costs by simplifying IT infrastructure and improving development and operational productivity through easier-to-use interfaces and functions
Register now for this webcast here.
Speakers:
- Claus T. Jensen, Senior Technical Staff Member and Chief Architect, Architectural Synergies and Lifecycles, IBM Software Group
- Alison Lucas, CICS TS Communications Software Developer, IBM Software Group
Broadcast date: April 21, 2010, 11 a.m., EDT
Developed for: IT and enterprise architects, IT managers, and industry solutions analysts and managers
Technical level: Intermediate
Join us after the webcast for a live question-and-answer session. This webcast will also be available for replay after the event.
Quick how to – CICS applid not (yet) active to VTAM and running CICS transactions from SDSF
Everyone has things in their lives that annoy them but instead of working on a solution, they just live with it because they either haven’t thought about it or the workaround is quick enough that it doesn’t really matter that much.
Since I started in CICS almost 5 years ago (has it been that long already!) I’ve always just accepted that if I’d forgotten to activate my VTAM applids before I brought a CICS region up, the quickest course of action was just to activate my applids and restart CICS. Now, I had always just assumed that there was a better way of doing that but there was always something else more important to worry about. So, no idea what we were discussing at the time, but somehow Grant managed to slip the solution to this one into our conversation. Now I am sure this is just the most obvious thing in the world to most of our readers but I thought I’d share the solution anyway.
CICS TG plug-in for the CICS Explorer – V2.0 available
The latest release of the CICS TG plug-in for CICS Explorer is now GENERALLY AVAILABLE here:
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=1083&uid=swg24022354
Version 2.0 can be used to independently view status of multiple Gateway daemons (z/OS or Multiplatforms) and does not require a connection to a CICS TS 4.1 region, or CICSPlex SM, as was the case in version 1.0.
What’s new in version 2.0
- This latest version of the SupportPac provides the following new or revised views:
- CICS Transaction Gateway Explorer view
- Gateway daemons view
- CICS connections view
- Console view
- Other features are a customizable Resource column layout for Gateway daemons, CICS connections and Property views, and support for CICS Transaction Gateway for Multiplatforms.
Note: CS05 V2.0 requires CICS Explorer Version 1.0.0.5, which is available to all existing CICS TS V3 and CICS TS V4 license holders.
Please refer to the link above for further details.
Revitalizing your CICS seminar – Hursley comes to North America
There are two really great CICS seminars coming up at the start of March, if you can get to Boston, Massachusetts (March 2nd) or Palisades, New York (March 4th).
So why are they so great? Well let’s just skip over the fact that they are free full-day seminars for the moment. They are also being taught by the IBM Hursley UK lab team, so you can be sure you are going to be in the hands of the experts (infact I see that CICS Distinguished Engineer Ian Mitchell will be one of the main speakers at the seminar, which is about as good as it gets). The seminar is based around the new CICS TS V4.1 release and won’t just be covering the new functionality in the new release but will also be showing you how to extract real value from your CICS regions.
The seminar is split into 3 sessions:
- Revitalizing Business
- Revitalizing Applications
- Simplifying your IT Environment
This is a seminar that is going to introduce you to what I consider to be the most consumable CICS Transaction Server to date. Part of this is about taking your existing assets and very quickly extracting new value without having to change them. The data inside your CICS regions is now more accessible and readily available than ever before, helping your business to be much more pro-active, flexible and adaptable to new opportunities and challenges that may come your way. To help you get there even faster, the CICS tools are there to help analyze and configure your CICS regions so those opportunities and challenges can be identified with ease.
There is a huge amount of new functionality in CICS TS V4.1, from the CICS Explorer, Event Processing, Atom support, SCA and a whole lot more. If you want to find out how to take advantage, then register for the seminar today so you don’t miss out. These are just the first two dates scheduled, look out for more seminars in April!
Full information on the seminar and registration can be found here:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/lmi/cics/index.html
There is also a little more information in the PDF for the seminar here:
2010 Revitalizing your CICS
New samples for trying out Atom feeds
We’ve just shipped a new APAR, PM02187, which contains samples for setting up some simple Atom feeds. So if you’ve thought about trying out some of the Web 2.0 features in CICS 4.1 but not had a go yet, then this might be for you. The samples are based around creating an Atom feed from records on a temporary storage queue (there’s a program to populate a sample TS queue in the APAR) and from a VSAM file (the FILEA sample). The samples are documented in the Scenarios section of the CICS 4.1 information center. Each scenario has step by step instructions and a demo.
We would be very interested to hear if you have some feedback on the APAR or on the scenarios and demos provided in the information center.
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