CICS community

Over the past couple of years I’ve slowly seen the CICS community find other avenues to communicate and share great information about CICS. Apart from all of the new blogs popping up everywhere there are a whole ton of new CICS, System z and DB2 folks on twitter.  So I thought I would spend a little time to try and pull all of the various sources together in one place and share some of my favourite people (some IBMers, some not). Feel free to add your own favourites in the comments sections (even if you just want to plug your own CICS blog). It’s about time I updated the CICS bloggers section again anyway.

It’s a great way to stay up to date with all the latest news and links. So give it a go and take your pick from my list below. I’m @chrishodgins, so give me a follow and be sure to say hello!

CICS community on Twitter

IBMers

@chrishodgins – Chris Hodgins (CICSPlex SM) – did I mention you should follow me? 😉

@IBM_CICS – The latest links straight from IBM CICS support

@CICSfluff – Nick Garrod (CICS marketing manager) – expect lots of links to videos, whitepapers and events. Some great content if you like to stay up to date. CICS marketing rock star!

@dianegjohnson – Diane Johnson (IBM zSoftware Partner Programs) – The ultimate CICS evangelist, more energy than a formula 1 car and a true passion for CICS and System z.

@KatSharp – Kat Sharp (CICS Explorer) – Part of the CICS Explorer team and one of us “young ones” (Grant’s term not mine). Super enthusiastic and helping to drive forward the new face of CICS. Go Explorer!

@crshnburn – Andrew Smithson (CICS Transaction Gateway) – lots of experimenting with CICS and sMash of late. This guy knows a scary amount about CICS Transaction Gateway. A definite follow.

@MattWhitbourne – Matt Whitbourne (CICS Product Manager) – Links for CICS and IBM in general, innovation++

@MartinPacker – Martin Packer (Mainframe performance expert) – currently doing some very odd things with SMF records. Mainframe performance guru and firefox extension hacker. A worrying combination for any manager. 😉

@IBM_System_Z – Sherrie Abshire (System z marketing manager) – lots of nice linkage about our beloved mainframe

@wfavero – Willie Favero (DB2 on z/OS) – a genuinely interesting read. I don’t know huge amounts about DB2 but I’m always interested in what Willie has to say.

Other CICS/Mainframe/DB2 related folks I follow

@hostbridge – Hostbridge – Top of this list because they have the best CICS logo in their profile! Need I say more!

@theCICSguy – Steve Baugh (author of theCICSguy blog) – Lots of linkage and a really great blog about CICS.

@HerbPayne – Herb Payne (Thesaurus [i-tcs.com]) – CICS dude!!

@TroyColeman – Troy Coleman (DB2 on z/OS) – Product manager at CA and a great DB2 blog. Well written and lots of good content.

@zBobThomas, @MainframeZone – Bob Thomas (publisher of zJournal and author of MainframeZone blog)

@ShareHQ – Share headquarters

@MainframeMag – IBM Systems Magazine

@WebSphere_Edu – Gene Fiorina (All of the latest WebSphere education news)

Web services samples

A new CICS SupportPac (CA1P) has been published, which gives step by step instructions on getting a Web Services application up and running on CICS TS version 3.1 or 3.2.

To download and for details of this SupportPac go here.

Do you want samples on the blog?

We would like to have some completely as-is, non supported etc code samples or snippets on this blog, but we need to figure out somewhere we can put them that is easy for you to get to and use, and that will keep the IBM lawyers happy.

So I have a question:

Nordic Guide

If you are attending the GSE Nordic event in Elsinore, Denmark, next week, I’d be very pleased to met you in person and have a chat about CICS, CICSPlex SM, System z, debugging and support, or anything else that you wanted to talk about. I am giving three presentations – on CICS/VSAM performance, CICS trace and CICSPlex SM, and the latest news in CICS monitoring and statistics. Please come round and say hello if you would like to…  best wishes – Andy

CICS is not my mother…

I was born 19 years after CICS, CICS is old enough to be my mother. I became aware of CICS about 2 years ago, though of course it had always been there, watching over me as I used an ATM for the first time or ordered that set of curtains, so pervasive in my life, and yet I never knew it…

Anyway, moving away from the “CICS is my estranged mother” metaphor; when I joined this department ten months ago everything was new. I had a little bit of experience with Assembler (I wrote a game of ‘pong’ using a z80, 8k RAM and 8k ROM- turns out Assembler 390 is not like this at all). Using green screens reminded me a bit of what I thought programming looked like before I actually did any, like in bad 1980’s hacker movies. My first week here is sort of blurry I remember my surprise that some applications are still using (or have ever used for that matter…) the F1- F12 keys and the confusion over that “Ctrl is now enter, and enter is return” thing. That took some getting used to. In fact, as someone whose programming experience is mainly from text editors and Eclipse, everything took some getting used to.

CICS is hard to get into, aside from the changes in the way your keyboard works, there’s the fact that it’s huge. There is so much to know; I think of it like that computer game, Age of Empires. I know about my bit, but everything around it is all blacked out, and I have to find out more about it by exploring. The exploring part is done by talking to people, this is what I really like about IBM. Everyone wants to help. Not only are my colleagues very smart, they are also very helpful, and if they don’t know the answer to my question they are also prepared to help me find someone who is. Being an Industrial Trainee in CICS is hard because a year is not enough time to explore enough of the map to be really good at anything, but its also great experience; I get to work on and contribute to a product that last year earned over $1 Billion, and I get to work with the leaders in the field.

Alice