Technical detail
Components
CICS CM Server
At the heart of CICS CM is the CICS CM Server. It is the Server that accepts command requests to obtain or update definitional data and perform management functions. The CICS CM Server is a CICS application. It runs within a CICS region and uses standard CICS services. There is no need to modify your release of CICS software to use CICS CM.
It is recommended that the CICS CM Server region be independent of your application CICS systems. This ensures availability of CICS CM when your normal CICS systems are shut down. However, the CICS CM Server region may be shared with the CICSPlex SM WUI Server.
Repository
Information about change packages, migration schemes, transformation rules, approval profiles and so on, are stored in the CICS CM repository. This is a VSAM file that contains CICS CM definitions. It never contains CICS resource definitions, as these are always stored in their native CSD files or CPSM repositories.
Journal
CICS CM also has a journal file used for historical reporting. Whenever a CICS resource definition changes, before and after image information is written to the journal. This enables audit reporting, resource definition version histories and migration Backout processing.
Remote agent
The last piece is the CICS CM remote agent program. This enables CICS CM to perform operations like Discard, Install and Newcopy to remote CICS regions managed using CSD-based resource definitions.
Interactions
DFHEDAP
Whenever CICS CM updates a CSD file, the write operation is performed using the DFHEADAP program. This is the CEDA transaction’s, back-end program. Therefore, all CSD updates include the integrity checks and controls provided by CEDA, in addition to controls performed by CICS CM. CICS CM can dynamically switch the CSD file, and this allows CICS CM to manage many CSDs from the one Server.
In addition, CICS CM uses its own high-speed readers for CSDs to achieve optimal responsiveness.
CICSPlex SM
CICS CM interacts with a CICSPlex SM context using standard CPSM API services. Once again, all updates are performed via the CPSM facilities, and therefore include all integrity checks supplied by CPSM.
CICS CM is aware of the data format differences between CPSM and CSD based definitions, and the differences in definitions saved at various releases of CICS TS software. Definition data is automatically translated into its correct form and structure when passing from one repository type to another. This enables CICS CM to work seamlessly across CSD files and CPSM repositories.
Geographically distributed environments
CICS CM can also write definitions to an export file which may be used for porting data across geographically distributed environments - for example to an isolated ‘production’ environment. In cases like this, an export-import technique is used to manage the movement of definitions from one z/OS system to another where there is no DASD sharing.
Client Interfaces
The Server uses CICS web services to communicate with clients. In technical terms, the Server API is SOAP XML transmitted over HTTP TCPIP. In functional terms, the clients send command requests to the Server for processing and to retrieve data. Command examples include CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE, COPY, LIST and INQUIRE of definitions. Specialist change package commands are also provided like READY, APPROVE, MIGRATE and BACKOUT.
ISPF, batch and the CICS CM plug-in for the CICS Explorer are the clients provided with CICS CM. The SOAP XML nature of the API is well suited for off-host presentation services. The CICS CM plug-in for the CICS Explorer running on a Windows or Linux desktop uses this API to communicate with the CICS CM server. The API is documented in the CICS CM materials and may be exploited to interface site-specific products and services into CICS CM.
Security and standards enforcement
Security
CICS CM allows you to control the visibility and access of resource definitions.
Using SAF security calls supported by RACF, CA-ACF2, Top Secret; you can limit access to functions like CREATE, UPDATE, COPY to specific CSDs or CPSM contexts. But even further, you can limit access to specific sets of resource definitions. For example, Joe can only see the PAYROLL Group of definitions, not the TAXATION Group. This allows you to limit access by combinations of functions, repositories and definitional sets. You can safely delegate definition management to recognized users.
Standards
CICS CM provides a powerful, rules-based, parametric exit to enforce definitional standards. For example, all PAYROLL Group files must have data set names starting with PAY. Or Transactions cannot be defined to run in BELOW the line storage.
The installation defines its own standards using simple parameter-based rules.
Override values can be applied, or updates can be rejected with appropriate error information.
The combining of security access and standards enforcement allows the opportunity to delegate CICS administration workload to newer staff or to application development teams, safe in the knowledge that you can achieve 'delegation with control'.
CICS CM plug-in for the CICS Explorer
The CICS CM plug-in for the CICS Explorer provides an intuitive eclipse-based graphical user interface to manage resource definitions using CICS CM. Many of the functions available via the CICS CM ISPF client are available using the CICS CM plug-in for the CICS Explorer.
You can navigate through the resource definition hierarchy of Configurations, Group lists and Groups. You can carry out CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) actions on resource definitions which reside on CSDs or CPSM BAS repositories. Creating and updating resource definitions is much easier using intuitive and smart editors which provide excellent attribute help and check facilities.
You can search multiple repositories for definitions that meet specific attribute characteristics.
The CICS CM plug-in for the CICS Explorer also provides a history view of all changes to resource definitions. For example, you can select all changes made last week or all changes made within a group.
Integration with the CICS Interdependency Analyzer (CICS IA) plug-in for the CICS Explorer enables the related resources to be displayed simply by right-clicking a selected resource. Understanding the CICS resources that are actually used by an application can greatly simplify and speed up the CSD clean-up process.
