IBM® CICS® Transaction Server (CICS TS) has been available in various guises for over 40 years, and continues to be one of the most widely used pieces of commercial software. This IBM Redbooks® publication helps application architects discover the value of CICS Transaction Server to their business. This book can help architects understand the value and capabilities of CICS Transaction Server and the CICS tools portfolio. The book also provides detailed guidance on the leading practices for designing and integrating CICS applications within an enterprise, and the patterns and techniques you can use to create CICS systems that provide the qualities of service that your business requires.

This IBM® Redpaper Redbooks® publication introduces the IBM System z® New Application License Charges (zNALC) pricing structure and provides examples of zNALC workload scenarios. It describes the products that can be run on a zNALC logical partition (LPAR), reasons to consider such an implementation, and covers the following topics: Using the IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty profile to host applications within an IBM CICS® environment and how it interacts with CICS applications and resources Security technologies available to applications that are hosted within a WebSphere Application Server Liberty profile in CICS How to implement modern presentation in CICS with a CICS Liberty Java virtual machine (JVM) server How to share scenarios to develop Liberty JVM applications to gain benefits from IBM CICS Transaction Server for IBM z/OS® Value Unit Edition Considerations when using mobile devices to interact with CICS applications and explains specific CICS technologies for connecting mobile devices by using the z/OS Value Unit Edition How IBM Operational Decision Manager for z/OS runs in the transaction server to provide decision management services for CICS COBOL and PL/I applications Installing the CICS Transaction Server for z/OS (CICS TS) Feature Pack for Modern Batch to enable the IBM WebSphere® batch environment to schedule and manage batch applications in CICS This book also covers what is commonly referred to as plain old Java objects (POJOs). The Java virtual machine (JVM) server is a full-fledged JVM that includes support for Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi) bundles. It can be used to host open source Java frameworks and does just about anything you want to do with Java on the mainframe. POJO applications can also qualify for deployment using the Value Unit Edition. Read about how to configure and deploy them in this companion Redbooks publication: IBM CICS and the JVM server: Developing and Deploying Java Applications, SG24-8038 Examples of POJOs are terminal-initiated transactions, CICS web support, web services, requests received via IP CICS sockets, and messages coming in via IBM WebSphere MQ messaging software.

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.

This IBM Redbooks® publication gives a broad understanding of several important concepts that are used when describing IBM CICS Transaction Server (TS) for IBM z/OS (CICS TS) performance. This publication also describes many of the significant performance improvements that can be realized by upgrading your environment to the most recent release of CICS TS. This book targets the following audience: Systems Architects wanting to understand the performance characteristics and capabilities of a specific CICS TS release. Capacity Planners and Performance Analysts wanting to understand how an upgrade to the latest release of CICS TS affects their environment. Application Developers wanting to design and code highly optimized applications for deployment into a CICS TS environment. This book covers the following topics: A description of the factors that are involved in the interaction between IBM z® Systems hardware and a z/OS software environment. A definition of key terminology that is used when describing the results of CICS TS performance benchmarks. A presentation of how to collect the required data (and the methodology used) when applying Large Scale Performance Reference (LSPR) capacity information to a CICS workload in your environment. An outline of the techniques that are applied by the CICS TS performance team to achieve consistent and accurate performance benchmark results. High-level descriptions of several key workloads that are used to determine the performance characteristics of a CICS TS release. An introduction to the open transaction environment and task control block (TCB) management logic in CICS TS, including a reference that describes how several configuration attributes combine to affect the behavior of the CICS TS dispatcher. Detailed information that relates to changes in performance characteristics between successive CICS TS releases, covering comparisons that relate to CICS TS V4.2, V5.1, V5.2, V5.3, V5.4, and V5.5. The results of several small performance studies to determine the cost of using a specific CICS functional area.

Today, organizations are responding to market demands and regulatory requirements faster than ever by extending their applications and data to new digital applications. This drive to deliver new functions at speed has paved the way for a huge growth in cloud-native applications, hosted in both public and private cloud infrastructures. Leading organizations are now exploiting the best of both worlds by combining their traditional enterprise IT with cloud. This hybrid cloud approach places new requirements on the integration architectures needed to bring these two worlds together. One of the largest providers of application logic and data services in enterprises today is IBM Z, making it a critical service provider in a hybrid cloud architecture. The primary goal of this IBM Redpaper publication is to help IT architects choose between the different application integration architectures that can be used for hybrid integration with IBM Z, including REST APIs, messaging, and event streams.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides information about how you can connect mobile devices to IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS®) Transaction Server (CICS TS), using existing enterprise services already hosted on CICS, or to develop new services supporting new lines of business. This book describes the steps to develop, configure, and deploy a mobile application that connects either directly to CICS TS, or to CICS via IBM Worklight® Server. It also describes the advantages that your organization can realize by using Worklight Server with CICS. In addition, this Redbooks publication provides a broad understanding of the new CICS architecture that enables you to make new and existing mainframe applications available as web services using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and provides support for the transformation between JSON and application data. While doing so, we provide information about each resource definition, and its role when CICS handles or makes a request. We also describe how to move your CICS applications, and business, into the mobile space, and how to prepare your CICS environment for the following scenarios: Taking an existing CICS application and exposing it as a JSON web service Creating a new CICS application, based on a JSON schema Using CICS as a JSON client This Redbooks publication provides information about the installation and configuration steps for both Worklight Studio and Worklight Server. Worklight Studio is the Eclipse interface that a developer uses to implement a Worklight native or hybrid mobile application, and can be installed into an Eclipse instance. Worklight Server is where components developed for the server side (written in Worklight Studio), such as adapters and custom server-side authentication logic, run. CICS applications and their associated data constitute some of the most valuable assets owned by an enterprise. Therefore, the protection of these assets is an essential part of any CICS mobile project. This Redbooks publication, after a review of the main mobile security challenges, outlines the options for securing CICS JSON web services, and reviews how products, such as Worklight and IBM DataPower®, can help. It then shows examples of security configurations in CICS and Worklight.

This book introduces the IBM System z New Application License Charges (zNALC) pricing structure and provides examples of zNALC workload scenarios. It describes the products that can be run on a zNALC logical partition (LPAR) and reasons to consider such an implementation. It also covers what is commonly referred to as plain old Java objects (POJOs). The Java virtual machine (JVM) server is a full-fledged JVM that includes support for Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi) bundles. It can be used to host open source Java frameworks and does just about anything you want to do with Java on the mainframe. POJO applications can also qualify for deployment using the Value Unit Edition. --