The Master Terminal

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:

• CN0A – Application Performance Analyzer
• CN0D – Debug Tool
• CN0F – Fault Analyzer

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.

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.

The first India CICS Developer Conference for 2009, based in Chennai, has just completed. Here we can see Dave Andrews (Director, CICS Products) during the opening keynote:

India CICS Developers Conference 2009 - Chennai

The second conference based in Bangalore, will start on December the 10th. If you hurry, you might still have time to register. (Note that this link will only be available until the end of the week).

Also launched was the India CICS User Group developerworks space. If you want to find out more, go here and get involved.

Dave arrived last week and spent some time before the conference with his TXSeries team in IBM Bangalore. If you want to see part of the team responsible for producing and supporting TXSeries, here you can see them all in an all-hands meeting with Dave:

TXSeries Team in Bangalore

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 .

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.

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.

Read more…

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 goes out of support today … unless you have arranged an extended support contract!.

You probably don’t need a reminder, but there is a nice shiny new release over here in the form of CICS TS 4.1

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.

So you have seen the light and decided to install CICS Explorer? Well done, great decision!

However, depending on your site, this might be easier said than done – not because installing Explorer is hard, but because people will probably start worrying about security now that this easy to use CICS tool is available.

The point of this post is to try explain a little about CICS Explorer and security, so that you can be primed to answer any questions that may arise.

Read more…