IBM Redbooks

George Bogner

Peter Klein

Chris Rayns

Philip Hale

Em James

John Tilling

Beginning with IBM® CICS® Version 2, applications can run on TCBs apart from the QR TCB, which has positive implications for improving system throughput and for implementing new technologies inside of CICS. Examples of implementing new technologies include using the IBM MVSTM Java virtual machine (JVM) inside CICS and enabling listener tasks written for other platforms to be imported to run under CICS. The newest release, CICS Transaction Server for z/OS® (CICS TS) V4.2, includes scalability enhancements so that you can perform more work more quickly in a single CICS system. The advantage of this enhancement is that you can increase vertical scaling and decrease the need to scale horizontally, reducing the number of regions that are required to run the production business applications. The scalability enhancements in CICS TS V4.2 fall into two broad areas, which are increased usage of open transaction environment (OTE) and of 64-bit storage. This IBM Redbooks® publication is a comprehensive guide to threadsafe concepts and implementation for IBM CICS. This book explains how systems programmers, applications developers, and architects can implement threadsafe applications in an environment. It describes the real-world experiences of users, and our own experiences, of migrating applications to be threadsafe. This book also highlights the two most critical aspects of threadsafe applications: system performance and integrity.

Threadsafe Considerations for CICS

John Taylor

Yun Peng Ge

Qian Zhang

George Burgess

Scott Clee

Tom Grieve

Guo Qiang Li

Derek Wen

NOTE: This book contains information about technologies that have been superseded and it is retained for historical purposes only. IBM CICS Transaction Server (CICS TS) has supported the deployment of Java applications since the 1990's. In CICS TS V1.3 (1999), IBM introduced the 'Pooled JVM' style of JVM infrastructure within CICS TS. This infrastructure was designed to be similar in nature to that which a CICS application developer for a language such as COBOL would be used to. It brought the benefits of the new Java language to CICS TS, without a dramatic change to the way CICS users thought of core concepts such as re-entrancy and isolation. As enterprise usage of Java evolved it began to make more and more use of multi-threaded environments where isolation was not a desired characteristic. Additionally, technologies such as OSGi (Open Service Gateway Initiative) evolved to overcome some of the original disadvantages of applying Java to an enterprise environment. As such, the limitations of the 'Pooled JVM' approach began to outweigh the benefits. In CICS TS V4.1 (2009), IBM introduced the new 'JVM server' infrastructure in CICS TS as a replacement to the 'Pooled JVM' approach. This 'JVM server' infrastructure provides a much more standard Java environment that makes the writing and porting of Java applications for CICS TS much simpler. In CICS TS V5.1 (2012), support for the old 'Pooled JVM' infrastructure was removed. While there is a relatively simple migration path from 'Pooled JVM' to 'JVM server', applications should no longer be written to the 'Pooled JVM' infrastructure. There are a number of more recent IBM Redbooks publications covering the replacement 'JVM server' technology, including: IBM CICS and the JVM server: Developing and Deploying Java Applications, SG24-8038 A Software Architect's guide to New Java Workloads in IBM CICS Transaction Server, SG24-8225

ARCHIVED: Pooled JVM in CICS Transaction Server

Regis David

Guo Liang Huang

Guan Jun Liu

James O'Grady

Adam Rice

Dennis Weiand

Zhi Qiu Xie

Helen Xue

IBM® CICS® Transaction Server Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting embeds and integrates technology from WebSphere® sMash into the CICS TS V4.1 run time, helping to reduce the time and cost of CICS application development. The Feature Pack provides a robust, managed environment for a wide range of situational applications allowing PHP and Groovy developers to create reports, dashboards, and widgets, and integrate CICS assets into mash-ups, and much more. The CICS Dynamic Scripting Feature Pack combines the benefits of scripted, Web 2.0 applications with easy and secure access to CICS application and data resources. The Feature Pack includes a PHP 5.2 run time implemented in JavaTM and with Groovy language support, support for native Java code and access to many additional libraries and connectors to enhance the development and user experience of rich Internet applications. Access to CICS resources is achieved by using the JCICS APIs. In this IBM Redbooks® publication, we introduce the Dynamic Scripting Feature Pack, show how to install and customize it, and provide examples for using it.

Introduction to CICS Dynamic Scripting

Ronald Lee

Andre Clark

Gordon Keehn

Erhard Woerner

Amy Ferrell

Chris Carlin

Sarah Bertram

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we discuss CICS®, which stands for Customer Information Control System. It is a general-purpose transaction processing subsystem for the z/OS® operating system. CICS provides services for running an application online where, users submit requests to run applications simultaneously. CICS manages sharing resources, the integrity of data, and prioritizes execution with fast response. CICS authorizes users, allocates resources (real storage and cycles), and passes on database requests by the application to the appropriate database manager, such as DB2®. We review the history of CICS and why it was created. We review the CICS architecture and discuss how to create an application in CICS. CICS provides a secure, transactional environment for applications that are written in several languages. We discuss the CICS-supported languages and each language's advantages in this Redbooks publication. We analyze situations from a system programmer's viewpoint, including how the systems programmer can use CICS facilities and services to customize the system, design CICS for recovery, and manage performance. CICS Data access and where the data is stored, including Temporary storage queues, VSAM RLS, DB2, IMSTM, and many others are also discussed.

CICS Transaction Server from Start to Finish

Chris Rayns

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