UK Student Mainframe contest

If you are reading this blog you are probably working somewhere that uses IBM mainframes and may be interested in helping to ensure that university students have had a taste of the mainframe (or -sorry Chris – proper computing as I call it).

So if you or your organisation has relationships with UK universities, then please make sure that they are aware of the upcoming UK Student Mainframe Contest. This is a really good way for UK university students to learn about System z.

If students participate and they get through the early challenges they will get their mitts on CICS and other z/OS software… Though the chance of winning a Sony Playstation 3 might be more of an incentive than getting first hand use of CICS 😉 .

CICS Explorer Security – Basic Authentication

If you are using a CICS Management Interface (CMCI) connection with CICS Explorer and are getting security problems due to the the wrong userid – typically the CICS default user – is getting used for the checks, the likely cause of the problem is that the TCPIPSERVICE you have set up is not defined appropriately.

CICSPlex SM Web User Interface users, should not have this problem as the TCPIPSERVICE used for CMCI users is automatically created with settings appropriate for the environment, but if you are an SMSS (‘single server’) user, and have configured your own TCPIPSERVICE, perhaps using the IBM supplied group (DFH£WU) as a model, then if the CICS is running with SEC=YES, then you need to update the TCPIPSERVICE used by the CMCI so that it specifies Authenticate(Basic):

If you do NOT run with Basic authentication on the TCPIPSERVICE used by the CMCI, your userid/password credentials will not be checked by CICS and the requests that are run in the CICS via the CMCI / CICS Explorer will be associated with the CICS default user.

CICS Explorer on Mac OS X

Shhh …now please keep this to yourself as I don’t really want to admit it ….

I am about to out myself here, but I like to use Mac OS X.

There I said it. But please don’t hold it against me!

I also like to use CICS Explorer, so that means I have a dilemma… Because, officially, the supported CICS Explorer platforms are:

• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Microsoft Windows XP (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 (32-bit)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux V5 (Intel®) (32-bit)

Mac OS X is missing from that list!

If you are prepared to run with an unsupported environment for CICS Explorer, it is possible to get CICS Explorer running on Mac OS X. That is the aim of this post.

CICS Explorer & CMCI/CICSPlex SM API support for CSD resources

CICS TS 4.1 APAR PK90112 closed last week. This APAR extends the CICSPlex SM API to provide access to CICS CSD resources.

Because the CICSPlex SM API model is used for the CMCI, and the SMSS (Single Server), this means that if you are a CICS TS 4.1 user, then once you have installed the PTFs for PK90112 (UK50340,UK50319,UK50341) and upgraded CICS Explorer to 1.0.0.2, you will be able to work with definitions in the CSD. This will work if you are using CICSPlex SM or the SMSS capabilities of the CMCI.

How does it work?

In the ‘CICSplex Repositories’ tab within CICS Explorer, if you have a CICSplex selected, then the CICS resources selected from the Administration menu will show CICSPlex SM BAS resources, for example:

BAS definition

To work with a CSD resource, you need to select a CICS from the ‘CICSplex Repositories’ tab:

CSD definition

Check out the “What’s new in version 1.0.0.2” within CICS Explorer for more details, and for details on the CMCI / CICSPlex SM API changes, see the DOC ++HOLD on the PTFs.

If you have any questions about the CSD support in CICS Explorer, please fire away over on Developerworks. If you have questions are on using the CMCI or CICSPlex SM API with the CSD support, feel free to ask away here…

Note that this CSD support is only available for CICS TS 4.1 systems, it is not available for earlier releases, even if they are managed by CICSPlex SM 4.1.