The Master Terminal

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.

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Just a very short post here, to highlight a short new video with Roger Middlemiss from Royal Bank of Canada discussing his experience of using CICS Transaction Gateway and IBM’s Betaworks programme. In particular, interesting to hear how RBC are looking to move all CICS TG installations to z in the near future for high availability and consolidation reasons.

The SM (System Management) perspective in CICS Explorer provides different capabilities depending on the connections you choose to configure and the CICS TS version that you have. This post attempts to describe some of the differences with the connections you can use.

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The CICS TS 4.1 Open Beta site is now live. If you want to get your hands on an early version of CICS TS 4.1 go here.

Questions or problems with the Beta may be raised on developerWorks.

The IBM CICS team is busy working on CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 4 Release 1 and you can read a preview about this upcoming release in this Preview announcement letter.

A couple of videos are available:

Technical Overview:

Business Value:

If you have any questions, go over to the I ♥ CICS facebook group, or collar one of the CICS team attending Share, or add a comment to this post.

If you are looking for updates on IBM System z software, check out the twitter stream for IBM_System_z.

For more information regarding System z software, the IBM site has plenty to read at:

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/en_US/

Four new supportPacs were announced today:

• CICS Explorer for Windows (CS1J)
• CICS tools plugins (CS1N)
• CICS Explorer SDK (CA1R)
• CICS Explorer for Linux (CS1O)

For details of these supportPacs check out this announcement.

A developerWorks CICS Explorer forum is available if you have any questions about these supportPacs.

In case you have missed it, IBM has released a Statement of Direction for CICS Explorer – the “New Face of CICS”. This is an Eclipse based Integration tool for CICS and CICS tooling.

Read more about it and see how you can get involved in the Beta program for CICS Explorer by checking out the latest issue of the CICS Portfolio e-Newsletter

If you have questions, add a comment to this post, but please remember we can’t go into details for non GA products.

The July edition of Computer Business Review contains a supplement that celebrates 50 years of innovation at Hursley. You can see an electronic copy of this supplement here. (Note that this online viewer requires Flash.)

This Saturday, IBM Hursley is celebrating being at Hursley for 50 years.

Full CICS responsibility didn’t come to Hursley until 1st January 1975, when Hursley traded PL/I with the Palo Alto Lab for CICS, making CICS a significant part of IBM Hursley History.

Although I am a relative ‘new boy’, first visiting Hursley in 1989, I have had a dig through my cupboards for some nostalgia, I came across a couple of old CICS ‘cherry picker’ photos.

These photos were taken by the Hursley photographic department perched perilously (though I am sure in full compliance with health and safety standards of the time) on a cherry picker, while all the teams involved in producing the new release were invited out onto the lawn in the front of Hursley house.

First up is circa 1989, CICS 3.1.1 photo:

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