IBM CICS Transaction Server User Manual

Offering easier integration with Web services, enhanced application transformation,
and improved performance and enterprise-management capabilities

IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS,

Version 3.1

Highlights

 Delivers CICS integration to enable

reuse of CICS applications within

broader, on demand scenarios,

through standard APIs and protocols

 Provides application-transformation

capabilities that enable you to

enhance existing applications and

construct new applications, using

contemporary programming

languages, constructs and tools

 Offers enterprise-management

capabilities to help you effectively

manage large run-time

configurations using modern user

interfaces, so you can meet

demanding service-level objectives

Many enterprises have assessed

the opportunities and advantages

presented by on demand business

technologies. Now, they’re aggressively

moving forward to implement

flexible business processes that take

advantage of new technologies, while

still leveraging existing IT assets. With

this flexible architecture in place,

companies can gain the momentum

they need to achieve competitive

advantage in the marketplace. To

keep pace, you must ensure that your

business processes integrate across

your company and with partners,

suppliers and customers by building

an ecosystem that can respond to any

market opportunity or competitive threat.

The industry-leading transaction-

processing platform

With this release, IBM CICS®

Transaction Server, Version 3.1 provides

the flexible platform you need to move

your organization toward becoming

an on demand business. To help you

create an on demand operating

environment, CICS Transaction Server,

Version 3.1 provides a range of major

enhancements that can be grouped

into three primary areas:

• Increased integration of CICS

applications

• Enhanced application transformation

• Improved performance and enterprise

management

Through these enhancements, CICS

Transaction Server, Version 3.1 can:

CICS Transaction Server Version 3.1

SOAP

message

Service requester

HFS

WSDL

CICS Web

services assistant

WSBind

Language

structure

CICS Transaction Server extends its support for Web services technology.

Web services

support

Data mapping

Business

logic

• Integrate with modern development

environments, helping to reduce the

cost of producing new technology

solutions and the time to market for

production of traditional applications.

• Enable new Java™ applications

to extend the value of existing

applications with their proven,

operational business logic, while

minimizing your risk .

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• Enable you to create adapters to

integrate business applications,

providing effective reuse of existing

assets. Consolidating integration

activities in the host environment helps

you reduce risk and complexity, as well

as the cost of creating point-to-point

integration solutions.

• Help you earn a rapid return on

investment (ROI) by providing a

range of new capabilities that you

can use immediately. Through system

configuration, you can help improve

service to the business and reduce

computing costs from the day

of adoption.

Increased integration of CICS

applications

These enhancements include

facilities to reuse CICS applications

within broader on demand business

scenarios, using standard interfaces —

primarily Web services and Java 2

Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE)

connectors — and other industry

communication protocols.

Web services support

CICS Transaction Server, Version 3.1

extends its Web services support

beyond the Simple Object Access

Protocol (SOAP) for CICS function that

was available optionally with IBM CICS

Transaction Server, Version 2. Together

with a range of extensions and new

capabilities, this support now enables

CICS business logic to be exposed as

Web services, as part of a service-

oriented architecture (SOA). These

extensions include support for

WS-Security to help protect SOAP

messages. Support is also provided

for distributed transaction-coordination

capability compatible with the WS-

Atomic Transaction specification

to help ensure that CICS Transaction

Server can adhere to Web services

standards.

CICS applications can naturally act in

the role of both service provider and

service requester, in cases where

the services are defined using Web

Services Description Language

(WSDL). The ability of CICS

Transaction Server to act as a service

provider means that it is relatively

simple for you to transform an existing

CICS application into a Web service.

The ability of CICS Transaction Server

to act as a service requester means

that a CICS application can issue

a single CICS command to use a

Web service provided by any

external provider.

To ease your ability to transform a

CICS application into a Web service,

IBM has included the CICS Web

Services Assistant, a build-time

capability provided to create WSDL

document from a simple language

structure, or a language structure from

an existing WSDL document. This

support is provided for COBOL, C/C++

and PL/I. The assistant also generates

information used to enable automatic

run-time conversion between SOAP

messages and containers and

COMMAREAs. These capabilities

help ensure that you do not have to

write your own code to parse inbound

messages and to construct outbound

messages.

Enhanced HTTP support

CICS Web support is enhanced by

upgrading CICS Transaction Server

HTTP support to comply with the HTTP,

Version 1.1 specification. Outbound

HTTP support has also been added,

so that CICS can act as both an HTTP

server or as an HTTP client using

simple EXEC CICS commands.

CICS Transaction Server also supports

pipelining and chunking of messages.

You can use new resource definitions,

known as uriMAP definitions, to

manage the HTTP server facility with-

out needing to customize your analyzer

program. CICS Transaction Server

automatically creates virtual hosts

using these definitions, so multiple host

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names can be provided at the same

Internet Protocol (IP) address, which

you can manage using CICS system

commands. Static responses can be

provided for HTTP requests, formed

from a document template or hierarchi-

cal file system (HFS) file. This means

that you can write CICS application

programs to use a common protocol for

business-to-business (B2B) communi-

cation, control hardware or software

using HTTP, and access information in

non-Web browser HTTP applications.

Improved connected, but inactive,

sockets allow many more clients to

connect to each CICS system. Using

an internal pseudo-conversational

model, no CICS task resources are

consumed by sockets waiting for the

next message from a partner. Use of

this model simplifies managing task

resources within a CICS environment.

Improvements to SSL support

CICS Transaction Server, Version 3.1

introduces a range of improvements to

security. Besides its existing support

for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL),

Version 3.0, CICS Transaction Server

now supports the Transport Layer

Security (TLS), Version 1.0 protocol.

This includes support for the

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

cipher suites that offer 128-bit and

256-bit encryption.

Resource definitions for TCP/IP

service and CORBA Server are

enhanced to allow the user to specify

the precise list of cipher suites to be

used in the negotiation. This capability

is also included in the new uriMAP

resource definition. To support

management of these new capabilities

and resources, CICS Transaction

Server, Version 3.1 includes new

system programming interface

(SPI) commands.

CICS Transaction Server, Version 3.1

now supports certificate revocation

lists (CRLs) when negotiating with

clients, allowing any connections

using revoked certificates to be closed

immediately. A new transaction, CCRL,

is provided to update the CRL in the

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

(LDAP) server. These negotiations

offer more flexibility. Now, you can

specify a minimum, as well as a

maximum, encryption level to negotiate

with particular users.

You can also specify whether session

IDs are shared across an IBM Parallel

Sysplex® environment, improving

the current use of the cache at the

address-space level. Caching enables

an SSL handshake to be optimized

based on a previous negotiation,

helping to improve the performance

of the connection setup.

An increased number of simultaneous

SSL connections can now be used,

as a result of the introduction of support

for pthreads within the IBM Language

Environment® enclave from which

system SSL is invoked. With this

support, your system can achieve

better throughput and improve the

support for new functions such as

Web services.

Support for mixed-case passwords

CICS Transaction Server, Version 3.1

now supports an underlying capability

for case-sensitive passwords. When

this capability is active, it is indicated

on the sign-on panel supplied by CICS

Transaction Server.

Improved user-ID checks

The revoked status of a user-ID or

group connection is now tested by

the EXEC CICS START USERID()

command at the time it is issued, so

that the issuer can be notified by the

USERIDERR command if applicable.

Application transformation

CICS Transaction Server, Version 3.1

includes enhancements that help

you extend existing applications and

develop new applications, using

contemporary programming

languages, constructs and tools.

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Enhanced interprogram data transfer

If you want to exchange more than

32KB of data between programs,

CICS Transaction Server now includes

a new application programming

interface (API), which introduces

containers and channels. Containers

are named blocks of data for passing

information between programs. Any

number of containers can be passed

between programs.

Containers are grouped together in

named channels. Channels can be

used as a standard mechanism for

exchanging data between programs.

A channel can be passed on EXEC

CICS LINK, START, XCTL and

RETURN commands. Data can be

exchanged between systems by

either using multiregion option (MRO)

or intersystem communication (ISC).

Channels provide a more-flexible

and a more-structured method of

passing data between program

components. Variation in the size and

number of containers can conveniently

be accommodated to allow easier

evolution of the interfaces between

programs. The size of a container is

one accommodation, limited only by

the amount of storage available. There

is no limit to the number of containers

that can be added to a channel. This

mechanism also removes the need for

programs to know the exact size of the

data returned. When containers go out

of scope, they can be automatically

destroyed, relieving you of storage-

management concerns.

Channels can be used by applications

written in any of the programming

languages supported by CICS

Transaction Server, Version 3.1.

Options on the container API

commands are provided for data

conversion, giving you a much-simpler

mechanism than that employed with a

COMMAREA. Also, in COMMAREAs,

application data conversion is

controlled by the system programmer.

With channels, application-data

conversion is controlled by the

application programmer using simple

API commands, minimizing the need

to involve the system programmer.

Language Environment MAIN support

for assembler

CICS Transaction Server now includes

support to enable coding of completely

Language Environment technology-

Existing application with COMMARE A

Program A

EXEC CICS LINK PROGRAM(‘PROGRAMB’ )

Changed applic ation using

Program A

EXEC CICS PUT CONTAINER (structure name)
CHANNEL(channel-name)
FROM(structure)

EXEC CICS LINK PROGRAM(‘PROGRAMB’ )
CHANNEL(channel-name)

EXEC CICS GET CONTAINER(structure-name)
INTO(structure)

enabled application programs in

assembler. A new translator option,

LEASM, is provided, which causes

Language Environment function to

be used to set up the program’s envi-

ronment. This option eases integration

of these applications into Language

Environment, so that Language

Environment services can run more

easily, and improves debugger support.

64-bit addressing toleration

Although CICS Transaction Server,

Version 3.1 does not support

the running of 64-bit applications,

it now supports 64-bit code running

as task-related user exits (TRUEs) in a

CICS address space. Extensions are

provided to CICS Transaction Server

abend-capture mechanisms to allow

the contents of full 64-bit, general-

purpose registers to be reported.

Program B

EXEC CICS ADDRESS

Program B

EXEC CICS GET
CONTAINER(structure­name) INTO (structure)

EXEC CICS PUT
CONTAINER(structure-name)

Restrictions on the amount of data that can be exchanged have been removed by using channels
and containers.

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