Cloud Enabling IBM CICS

Cloud Enabling IBM CICS

Released December 2014
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: None

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Book description

This IBM® Redbooks® publication takes an existing IBM 3270-COBOL-VSAM application and describes how to use the features of IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS®) Transaction Server (CICS TS) cloud enablement. Working with the General Insurance Application (GENAPP) as an example, this book describes the steps needed to monitor both platform and application health using the CICS Explorer CICS Cloud perspective.

It also shows you how to apply threshold policy and measure resource usage, all without source code changes to the original application. In addition, this book describes how to use multi-versioning to safely and reliably apply and back out application changes.

This Redbooks publication includes instructions about the following topics:

  • How to create a CICS TS platform to manage and reflect the health of a set of CICS TS regions, and the services that they provide to applications

  • How to quickly get value from CICS TS applications, by creating and deploying a CICS TS application for an existing user application

  • How to protect your CICS TS platform from erroneous applications by using threshold policies

  • How to deploy and run multiple versions of the same CICS TS application on the same CICS TS platform at the same time, enabling a safer migration from one application version to another, with no downtime

  • How to measure application resource usage, enabling a comparison of the performance of different application versions, and chargeback based on application use


    • This book describes how CICS TS cloud enablement uses existing operational facilities, including monitoring, events, transaction tracking, CICS TS bundles, and IBM CICSPlex® System Manager (CICSPlex SM), to integrate with existing deployment and management processes.

    Table of contents

    1. Front cover
    2. Notices
      1. Trademarks
    3. IBM Redbooks promotions
    4. Preface
      1. Authors
      2. Now you can become a published author, too!
      3. Comments welcome
      4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
    5. Part 1 Introduction
    6. Chapter 1. Cloud enabling your CICS TS applications
      1. 1.1 Did you know?
      2. 1.2 Business value
      3. 1.3 Solution overview
      4. 1.4 Cloud computing in a CICS TS context
      5. 1.5 Overview of the cloud-enabling technologies in CICS TS V5
        1. 1.5.1 Platform overview
        2. 1.5.2 Application overview
    7. Chapter 2. GENAPP introduction
      1. 2.1 CICS TS topology
      2. 2.2 Application architecture
        1. 2.2.1 GENAPP in a single managed region
        2. 2.2.2 GENAPP in a CICS TS topology
      3. 2.3 Limitations of the current design
        1. 2.3.1 Meaningful names
        2. 2.3.2 Taking the application through the lifecycle
        3. 2.3.3 Managing updates to GENAPP
        4. 2.3.4 Dependencies
        5. 2.3.5 Multiple region separation
        6. 2.3.6 Control of resource usage
    8. Part 2 How to cloud-enable your IBM CICS TS
    9. Chapter 3. Creating a platform
      1. 3.1 The CICS TS platform
      2. 3.2 The role of a CICS TS platform
      3. 3.3 The components of a CICS TS platform
        1. 3.3.1 Status
        2. 3.3.2 Lifecycle
        3. 3.3.3 Scope
        4. 3.3.4 Region types
        5. 3.3.5 Services
        6. 3.3.6 Policies
      4. 3.4 Example single-region platform project
        1. 3.4.1 Defining the development topology
        2. 3.4.2 Defining the platform
        3. 3.4.3 Deploy the platform
        4. 3.4.4 Multi-region platform for test or production
      5. 3.5 Outcome
    10. Chapter 4. Creating an application
      1. 4.1 The CICS TS application
        1. 4.1.1 Gaining value for existing CICS TS applications
      2. 4.2 The components of a CICS TS application
      3. 4.3 Developing a CICS TS application
      4. 4.4 Example
        1. 4.4.1 Prerequisites
        2. 4.4.2 Creating application entry points
        3. 4.4.3 CICS Application Project
        4. 4.4.4 CICS Application Binding Project
        5. 4.4.5 Deploying the CICS TS application and creating the application definition
        6. 4.4.6 Installing and managing the CICS TS application
        7. 4.4.7 Adding dependencies into the CICS TS application
        8. 4.4.8 Updating the CICS Application Project
        9. 4.4.9 Update the CICS Application Binding Project
        10. 4.4.10 Redeploying the CICS TS application
        11. 4.4.11 Installing and managing the updated CICS TS application
        12. 4.4.12 Diagnosing dependency errors
      5. 4.5 The outcome
    11. Chapter 5. Applying a policy
      1. 5.1 CICS Policy
        1. 5.1.1 Policy rule thresholds
        2. 5.1.2 Policy rule actions
        3. 5.1.3 Policy rule scope
      2. 5.2 Example CICS policies
        1. 5.2.1 Platform policy example
        2. 5.2.2 Application operation policy example
        3. 5.2.3 Installing the updated application
        4. 5.2.4 View active policy
      3. 5.3 Results of adding a policy
    12. Chapter 6. Packaging an application for multiversion deployment
      1. 6.1 Prerequisites
      2. 6.2 Example 1: Repackaging CICS TS resources into the GeneralInsuranceCustomer CICS TS application
        1. 6.2.1 Discarding the existing application and resources
        2. 6.2.2 Allocating a new data set, preparing load modules, and creating a dynamic load library definition
        3. 6.2.3 Updating CICS TS resources
        4. 6.2.4 Updating the application version
        5. 6.2.5 Exporting, installing, and enabling the application
        6. 6.2.6 Making the application available and running it
      3. 6.3 Example 2: Provisioning a logic change to the GeneralInsuranceCustomer CICS TS application
        1. 6.3.1 Fixing the bug and compiling
        2. 6.3.2 Updating data set name in LIBRARY
        3. 6.3.3 Updating the application version
        4. 6.3.4 Exporting, installing, and enabling
        5. 6.3.5 Validating that application version 1.0.2 is still operational
        6. 6.3.6 Making application version 1.100.0 available and running it
      4. 6.4 Possible extensions for the application examples
      5. 6.5 Summary
    13. Part 3 What you get by cloud-enabling your CICS TS
    14. Chapter 7. Measurement by application
      1. 7.1 Overview
        1. 7.1.1 The application context within the CICS Monitoring Facility
        2. 7.1.2 Problems with traditional chargeback and performance monitoring
        3. 7.1.3 Pre-requisites to using application context in CICS Monitoring Facility records
      2. 7.2 Examples of using the application context in the CICS Monitoring Facility
        1. 7.2.1 Enabling chargeback within the GENAPP application using CICS Performance Analyzer
        2. 7.2.2 Monitoring performance of the GENAPP application using CICS Performance Analyzer
        3. 7.2.3 Diagnosing problems in GENAPP using CICS Explorer
    15. Chapter 8. Managing by policy
      1. 8.1 Benefits of CICS Policy
      2. 8.2 Reviewing CICS Threshold Policy
        1. 8.2.1 Policy rule types
        2. 8.2.2 Policy actions
      3. 8.3 Policy scope
        1. 8.3.1 Policy for applications
        2. 8.3.2 Policy for platforms
      4. 8.4 Setting policy
      5. 8.5 Policy scenarios
      6. 8.6 Concluding thoughts
    16. Chapter 9. Application lifecycle management
      1. 9.1 Managing application change through versioning
        1. 9.1.1 Semantic versioning
        2. 9.1.2 Development lifecycle
      2. 9.2 Managing application deployment through versioning
        1. 9.2.1 Switching application versions with no outage
        2. 9.2.2 Phasing in a new application
        3. 9.2.3 CICS TS region consolidation
      3. 9.3 Applying versioning to GeneralInsuranceCustomer
        1. 9.3.1 Using semantic versioning
        2. 9.3.2 Semantic versioning in the development lifecycle
        3. 9.3.3 Semantic versioning in the deployment lifecycle
      4. 9.4 Evolving the GeneralInsuranceCustomer application
      5. 9.5 Promoting GeneralInsuranceCustomer from dev to test
      6. 9.6 GeneralInsuranceCustomer deployment lifecycle
      7. 9.7 Outcomes
    17. Part 4 Appendixes
    18. Appendix A. Setup and environment
      1. Installing the general insurance application
      2. Building the application environment
      3. Build the CICS TS environment
      4. Testing the general insurance application
    19. Appendix B. IBM CICS Explorer setup
      1. Overview
    20. Related publications
      1. IBM Redbooks
      2. Other publications
      3. Online resources
      4. Help from IBM
    21. Back cover
    22. IBM System x Reference Architecture for Hadoop: IBM InfoSphere BigInsights Reference Architecture
      1. Introduction
      2. Business problem and business value
      3. Reference architecture use
      4. Requirements
      5. InfoSphere BigInsights predefined configuration
      6. InfoSphere BigInsights HBase predefined configuration
      7. Deployment considerations
      8. Customizing the predefined configurations
      9. Predefined configuration bill of materials
      10. References
      11. The team who wrote this paper
      12. Now you can become a published author, too!
      13. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
    23. Notices
      1. Trademarks

    Product information

    • Title: Cloud Enabling IBM CICS
    • Author(s):
    • Release date: December 2014
    • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
    • ISBN: None