The CICS Explorer® Software Development Kit (SDK) provides an environment for developing and deploying Java™ applications to CICS®, including support for OSGi and web projects.
About this task
You can use the SDK to create new applications, or repackage
existing Java applications to
comply with the OSGi specification. The OSGi Service Platform provides
a mechanism for developing applications using a component model and
deploying those applications to a framework as OSGi bundles. An OSGi
bundle is the unit of deployment for an application and contains
version control information, dependencies, and application code. The
main benefit of OSGi is that you can create applications from reusable
components that are accessed only through well-defined interfaces
called Java packages. You can then use OSGi services to
access the Java packages. You can also manage the lifecycle and dependencies
of Java applications in a granular
way. For information about developing applications with OSGi, see
the 
OSGi
Alliance website.
You can
also use the SDK to work with dynamic web projects and OSGi application
projects that include Java servlets
and JSP pages. You can create an application that has a modern web
layer and business logic that uses JCICS to access CICS services. If your web application needs
to access code from another OSGi bundle, it must be deployed as an
OSGi Application Project (EBA file). You must either include the other
OSGi bundle in the application manifest, or install the other bundle
in the Liberty bundle_repository as a common library. The EBA file
must include a web-enabled OSGi bundle (WAB file) to provide the entry
point to the application and to expose it as a URL to a web browser. 
You can use the SDK to develop a Java application to run in any supported release of CICS. Different releases of CICS support different versions of Java, and the JCICS API has also been extended in later releases to support more features of CICS. To avoid using the wrong classes, the SDK provides a feature to set up a target platform. You can define which release of CICS you are developing for, and the SDK automatically hides the Java classes that you cannot use.
The SDK help provides full details on how you can perform each of the following steps to develop and deploy applications.
Procedure
- Set up a target platform for your Java development. For detailed instructions, see the relevant step in Creating the JCICS examples or Creating the servlet examples.
The target platform ensures that you use only the Java classes that are appropriate for the target release of CICS in your application development. If you select a CICS TS 5.1 target, you might get a warning that the target is a newer version than the current Eclipse installation. You can ignore this warning message.
- Optional: Create
a dynamic web application (WAR) or a Web-enabled OSGi bundle project
(WAB) to develop your application presentation layer. You
can create servlets and JSP pages in a dynamic web project. For a
WAR file, you must also add the CICS Liberty library to your build
path to give access to JCICS.
- Package your application for deployment:
- If you are deploying a Web-enabled
OSGi bundle project (WAB), create an OSGi application project (EBA)
- Create one or more CICS bundle
projects to reference your EBA or
your web application (WAR file). CICS bundles are the unit of deployment for
your application in CICS. Put
the web applications that you want to update and manage together in
a CICS bundle project. You
must know the name of the JVMSERVER resource in which you want to
deploy the application.
You can also add a subset of CICS resources to the CICS Bundle project, such as PROGRAM, URIMAP, and TRANSACTION resources. These resources are dynamically installed and managed as part of the application.
