IBM CICS and the JVM server: Developing and Deploying Java Applications


Book Description

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides information about the new Java virtual machine (JVM) server technology in IBM CICS® Transaction Server for z/OS® V4.2. We begin by outlining the many advantages of its multi-threaded operation over the pooled JVM function of earlier releases. The Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) is described and we highlight the benefits OSGi brings to both development and deployment. Details are then provided about how to configure and use the new JVM server environment. Examples are included of the deployment process, which takes a Java application from the workstation Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) with the IBM CICS Explorer® software development kit (SDK) plug-in, through the various stages up to execution in a stand-alone CICS region and an IBM CICSPlex® environment. The book continues with a comparison between traditional CICS programming, and CICS programming from Java. As a result, the main functional areas of the Java class library for CICS (JCICS) application programming interface (API) are extensively reviewed. Further chapters are provided to demonstrate interaction with structured data such as copybooks, and how to access relational databases by using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) and Structured Query Language for Java (SQLJ). Finally, we devote a chapter to the migration of applications from the pooled JVM model to the new JVM server run time.




IBM CICS and Liberty: What You Need to Know


Book Description

This IBM® Redbooks® publication, intended for architects, application developers, and system programmers, describes how to design and implement Java web-based applications in an IBM CICS® Liberty JVM server. This book is based on IBM CICS Transaction Server V5.3 (CICS TS) using the embedded IBM WebSphere® Application Server Liberty V8.5.5 technology. Liberty is an asset to your organization, whether you intend to extend existing enterprise services hosted in CICS, or develop new web-based applications supporting new lines of business. Fundamentally, Liberty is a composable, dynamic profile of IBM WebSphere Application Server that enables you to provision Java EE technology on a feature-by-feature basis. Liberty can be provisioned with as little as the HTTP transport and a servlet web container, or with the entire Java EE 6 Web Profile feature set depending on your application requirements. This publication includes a Technology Essentials section for architects and application developers to help understand the underlying technology, an Up-and-Running section for system programmers implementing the Liberty JVM server for the first time, and a set of real-life application development scenarios.




CICS and DevOps: What You Need to Know


Book Description

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides an example approach of an agile IT team that implements development and operations (DevOps) capabilities into an IBM CICS® application. Several tools are used to show how teams can achieve transparency, traceability, and automation in their application lifecycle with the assistance of all the stakeholders to deliver high-quality application changes that meet the requirements. The application changes that are built highlight the composable and dynamic nature of using CICS, the Liberty JVM runtime server, and IBM UrbanCodeTM Deploy, which allows developers to get their applications running quickly by using only the programming model features that are required for their applications. The target audience for this publication is IT developers, managers, and architects, and project managers, test managers and developers, and operations managers and developers.




Application Development for IBM CICS Web Services


Book Description

This IBM® Redbooks® publication focuses on developing Web service applications in IBM CICS®. It takes the broad view of developing and modernizing CICS applications for XML, Web services, SOAP, and SOA support, and lays out a reference architecture for developing these kinds of applications. We start by discussing Web services in general, then review how CICS implements Web services. We offer an overview of different development approaches: bottom-up, top-down, and meet-in-the-middle. We then look at how you would go about exposing a CICS application as a Web service provider, again looking at the different approaches. The book then steps through the process of creating a CICS Web service requester. We follow this by looking at CICS application aggregation (including 3270 applications) with IBM Rational® Application Developer for IBM System z® and how to implement CICS Web Services using CICS Cloud technology. The first part is concluded with hints and tips to help you when implementing this technology. Part two of this publication provides performance figures for a basic Web service. We investigate some common variables and examine their effects on the performance of CICS as both a requester and provider of Web services.




Liberty in IBM CICS: Deploying and Managing Java EE Applications


Book Description

This IBM® Redbooks® publication is intended for IBM CICS® system programmers and IBM Z architects. It describes how to deploy and manage Java EE 7 web-based applications in an IBM CICS Liberty JVM server and access data on IBM Db2® for IBM z/OS® and IBM MQ for z/OS sub systems. In this book, we describe the key steps to create and install a Liberty JVM server within a CICS region. We then describe how to best use the different deployment techniques for Java EE applications and the specific considerations when deploying applications that use JDBC, JMS, and the new CICS link to Liberty API. Finally, we describe how to secure web applications in CICS Liberty, including transport-level security and request authentication and authorization by using IBM RACF® and LDAP registries. Information is also provided about how to build a high availability infrastructure and how to use the logging and monitoring functions that are available in the CICS Liberty environment. This book is based on IBM CICS Transaction Server (CICS TS) V5.4 that uses the embedded IBM WebSphere® Application Server Liberty technology. It is also applicable to CICS TS V5.3 with the fixes for the continuous delivery APAR PI77502 applied. Sample applications are used throughout this publication and are freely available for download from the IBM CICSDev GitHub organization along with detailed deployment instructions.




Implementing IBM CICS JSON Web Services for Mobile Applications


Book Description

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.




ARCHIVED: Pooled JVM in CICS Transaction Server V3


Book Description

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




A Software Architect's Guide to New Java Workloads in IBM CICS Transaction Server


Book Description

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.




New Ways of Running Batch Applications on z/OS: Volume 1 CICS Transaction Server


Book Description

Mainframe computers play a central role in the daily operations of many of the world's largest corporations. Batch processing is still a fundamental, mission-critical component of the workloads that run on the mainframe. A large portion of the workload on IBM® z/OS® systems is processed in batch mode. This IBM Redbooks® publication is the first volume in a series of four in which we specifically address new technologies introduced by IBM to facilitate the use of hybrid batch applications that combine the best aspects of Java and procedural programming languages such as COBOL. This volume specifically focuses on the latest support in CICS to run batch tasks. The audience for this book includes IT architects and application developers, with a focus on batch processing on the z/OS platform in a CICS environment.




Cloud Enabling IBM CICS


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.