CICS Fun Stuff

Another Great Cruise

2010-02-18T07:49:00.000-05:00

Tampa to the Cayman, Islands to Cozumel Mexico back to Tampa. I know it doesn't have anything to do with CICS, but... A bad day at sea is still better than a good day working! Not that I don't like my current position, I really do.

I'll have to find some interesting CICS facts / info to talk about, now that I'm back...

CICS Explorer

2009-09-16T06:46:00.002-04:00

Just wondering how many people are using this tool and why.

Is it used in conjunction with CICSPlex, instead of????

Please share your thought's ...

Sorry I've been away for a while...

2009-06-18T15:12:00.005-04:00

Great Cruise. Ate too much, but then what are you supposed to do ... Great weather. We had a wonderful time.

Now back to CICS... and some DB2

We have had some discussions about adding MORE test CICS regions. We have about 60 or so now. They usually come on pairs. Two distinct application directions. One is primarily VSAM and the other is DB2. One has some Web code, the other doesn't.
Virtually NO MRO, a little function shipping and a little File sharing (VSAM). Just a bit 1980's, without the Web code ... This is the 21st century, isn't it?

Trying to get the developers to think a bit more outside the box is like trying to get a COBOL programmer to write code in Fortran or RPG. So thy don't disrupt any other testing that mey be going on, they want a new set of CICS regions. Taking turns is something they haven't learned yet.

We've had the same problem with DB2 subsystems, but a DASD limitation has curbed those requests, until we get more DASD. On the DB2 side, system testing is requiring a production sized subsystem for their testing. If we didn't have many clients, and the system test was for most everything, that would be possible. But, we have 30+ clients, the systems test is for one of those clients, so one would think the set-up for the system test would be for that client's data, a subset of production, but the system test folks seem to have a problem figuring out what data is whose and rather than taking the time ONCE to figure that out, they ask for pretty much everything. And they wonder why their tests run so long ...

Just wondering how others handle the testing problem...

Vacation ...

2009-04-07T06:10:00.003-04:00

During the next two weeks, I'll be cruising with Holland America, in the Caribbean, enjoying the sea breeze and fine food and exotic ports of call. I'll be thinking of some new topics for this blog and IF I get a chance may even post something from the ship.
Later...

Twitter use amoung CICS people

2009-03-12T06:28:00.003-04:00

Just curious about how much Twitter is being used in addition to / instead of, the mainstream discussion list use. This has been recently talked about on several DB2 blogs. Twitter use seems to be increasing, when users have access at work. Social networking is still a bit iffy in the typical business world, but expanding. A status Blogs had a short time a go.
I look at Twitter the same as a blog or discussion list: another tool in the tool belt. Yes it can get overwhelming if you are following hundreds of people and hundreds are following you. You feel obligated to respond right away, which can take you away from "normal" duties. But, if you get some information that can save you time/money/work/solve a problem, is it worth it? Some say yes, those that use Twitter and some say no, mostly management. Is the time spent worth the results?

Your thoughts...?

Least we forget QOR's and DOR's

2009-02-04T07:48:00.005-05:00

Martin Packer, reminded me of a couple other CICS regions that are being used. QOR's or Queue Owning Regions, for your Temporary Storage queues, DOR's or Data Owning Regions for data, can be files, Data Tables or anything data..

How are you using these CICS regions?

TOR, AOR, FOR

2009-02-03T10:03:00.002-05:00

What do your environments look like? Some that I've seen include:

one TOR - four AOR's
two TOR's - six AOR's - one FOR
TOR/AOR - one FOR

The list can be endless ...

FOR's, part three...

2009-01-30T14:00:00.002-05:00

Don't forget to specify the information about the VSAM files when defining the remote details. Things like record size and keylength come to mind that if not specified will cause very strange results. Also, if the CSD is shared between the regions, only one FILE definition is needed for ALL of them. Include the REMOTESystem and REMOTEName and CICS will determin if this FILE is local or remote for you. This same concept can be used for TRANSACTIONS as well.

FOR's part two...

2009-01-27T21:19:00.002-05:00

A CICS FOR was created this week to help establish a easy way to control the access to a set of VSAM files being used by 60 CICS regions. Sure, there is some overhead of shipping a VSAM request across the the ether to another CICS region, but the gains will out way the overhead. All the LSR Pools can be tailored just for these VSAM files, which may increase the efficency and offset the overhead. Since the VSAM files are now in just one CICS region, if they need to be open/closeed, it can be done only once and all 60 CICS regions will benefit in a very short time period. This could take 30 to 45 minutes for all 60.

Welcome to 1993 .... a few years late ...

FOR is that Good?

2009-01-13T21:33:00.003-05:00

A recent question about a set of files that are shared between about 60 CICS regions, should they be in a single CICS File Owning Region (FOR), so they could be opened/closed/set read only only once, instead of 60 times? Apparently this set of files is updated in a production CICS region and then may need to be Open/Closed in the 60 development regions after the updates, so those regions will reflect the changes. Currently the Open/Closes are done individually.

The FOR would allow the 60 development regions to share the set of files and buffers and the Open/Closes would only need to be done one time.

Any other plus's or minus's......???

CICS and Rexx

2008-12-22T13:03:00.001-05:00

Anyone doing anything with Rexx and CICS? I may start a POC to see what I can do using Rexx. I'll let you know what I find....

Should production transactions abend?

2008-12-18T11:32:00.003-05:00

I know of a company that will NOT fix transactions that abend in production. NO time, it doesn't happen all the time... are some of the responses Tech Support gets from the developers. An EMAIL address was set up so the development support staff could be given notice when abends happen. No one has been asked to be put into that mailing list.
I would disable the transaction(s) until someone agrees to work on them. even if that meant some loss of work.

How does anyone else feel?

Threadsafe

2008-12-17T06:34:00.002-05:00

Currently, there is a plan to move to Threadsafe CICS programs, just as long as they don't have to be changed. Apparently the application development managers don't understand the concept of programs being Threadsafe or they wouldn't have made the proclamation "We are going to Threadsafe programs for CICS" to better utilize the computer. This group of people need to STOP reading magazines and start listening to their people that know. There should have been meetings, long before I started here, explaining what Threadsafe is, what it gains, and the process for getting there. These costs should have been noted, and a plan for this developed and formalized.
Maybe in the next life .....

The CICS Web program from ...

2008-12-12T06:38:00.008-05:00

I was asked to review a CICS Web program for efficiency. There was a development effort underway that was going to change the size of the input and the number of different options this program was going to have to work on.
The first thing I noticed was the program looked through the entire input stream for a XML tag that would identify which function this data was connected to. This tag would have been in the first 30 - 50 characters. This would have been OK if the input stream was small, however this input stream was going to become very large, 2MB - 4MB. The developers also wanted to move this input stream to Working-Storage. They are adding new tags. Hopefully the new user was the first tag, at least his transactions would be a bit quicker. Once the tag was found, the appropriate code was performed, if that tag wasn't found, then on to the next tag. Scanning through 3 MB of XML data 4 or 5 times before finding the tag you want AND you want sub-second response time... !!!! I don't think a CRAY Super Computer could do that!
The program also performed a paragraph to upper case a record, but did it as many times as the record was long.
The program also didn't believe CICS for the length of the input stream and did some really strange checking for what was at the end of the stream to determine the length. I can't believe that CICS didn't return the correct length.
My look through this program was an eye-opener !
My recommendations were ignored and the program was cloned after the changes were made and now there are 3 or 4 of these trying to work.
These programs and my recommendations have resurfaced a few times in the last 3 years and some of my changes have been made, but not all of them. They would be out of the scope of the then current project and it appears to be working, so we aren't going to change it now .... So when??

CICS Web Client

2008-12-08T21:37:00.001-05:00

I once had an opportunity to write a CICS web client. This was an application that was called as a subroutine, being passed a commarea. It would construct a outgoing XML message, then call a POSTing program to send the message. When the response message was received, the XML would be parsed back into the commarea. The application also included a program to sign on to the server on the other end. Very fun project.

This site...

2008-12-04T07:02:00.000-05:00

This site is about CICS. If you know what it is, then you’re at the right place. If you don’t know, welcome anyway, but to learn what it is, here.

I started this site to share some of my 20+ years of installing, configuring, tuning and programming CICS starting with CICS 1.6.1 in 1984. The current version I’m familiar with is Transaction Server 3.1, but since I'm currently working as a DB2 DBA, I'm not currently supporting CICS, but I still get called upon because of my experience.

This site won’t try to teach you all about CICS, you’ll have to go elsewhere for that. What I’ll try to do is share some of my projects/programs/code segments/etc that may help you.

There may also be a Rexx or two thrown in for good measure.

What this Blog is all about

2008-12-03T09:54:00.000-05:00

I hope this blog will be about CICS, if I don't get too side-tracked. I have some code snippets, ideas for all sorts of programs/projects, opinions, etc to share.

It's Begun...

2008-12-03T06:52:00.000-05:00

Well I've started a Blog on Blogger... This should be fun.