Creating a CICS Application project

A CICS® Application project defines an application bundle. An application bundle is a type of management bundle that describes a CICS application, including the application name, description, and version. The application bundle references the CICS bundles that contain the application resources, application entry points, dependencies, and any CICS policies relating to the application.

Before you begin

Create CICS Bundle projects to define or import the resources for each component of the application. See Creating a CICS Bundle project.
Add resource definitions for the application resources to the CICS bundles. See Adding resources to a CICS bundle.
Declare any dependencies on other resources outside the CICS bundles that must be available in the platform for the application to run. See Defining bundle dependencies.
Define application entry points in the CICS bundles for the resources that provide access to the application. See Defining application entry points.

CICS bundle projects must have an ID and a version number to be included in an application bundle. CICS bundle projects that were created for releases before CICS Transaction Server Version 5 Release 1 did not have an ID and a version number. If you want to include these CICS bundle projects, use the bundle manifest editor in the CICS Explorer® to add an ID and version number to the projects.

About this task

You can reference one or many CICS bundles in an application bundle. By packaging your application in this way, you can deploy an application and its bundles as a single entity to CICS, making it easier to update and manage the application in CICS. A CICS bundle can be installed in CICS regions by more than one application if it contains only resources that are eligible for multi-versioning.

Applications deployed on platforms that use the CICS resources that are supported as private resources, in combination with other resources designed for applications and with imported resources, are eligible for multi-versioning. The following resources are supported as part of multi-versioned applications:

PROGRAM resources defined in CICS bundles that are part of the application
LIBRARY resources defined in CICS bundles that are part of the application
Policies
Statements of application entry points
Any resource that is defined as a dependency, or import, for the application

A CICS bundle that contains other resource types cannot be included in other applications that are installed in the same CICS regions in the platform, and you cannot add it to the platform if it has already been installed for an application. If your application requires a resource that is not supported for multi-versioning and has already been used in a CICS bundle that has been installed in the target region type in the platform, create a new CICS bundle project. Declare the resource as a dependency for the new CICS bundle, by specifying an import in the manifest file. Then include the new CICS bundle project in your application project. For instructions to declare a resource as a dependency, see Defining bundle dependencies.

When you define a TRANSACTION resource in a CICS bundle, and deploy the CICS bundle as part of an application, or add the CICS bundle to a platform, autoinstall of the initial program for the transaction is not supported. For a TRANSACTION resource defined in a CICS bundle that is deployed as part of an application, you must define and deploy the PROGRAM resource for the transaction's initial program as part of the same application.

Procedure

Open the CICS Cloud perspective. In the Project Explorer view, check that the CICS Platform project for the target platform is present in your local workspace. CICS Explorer requires this project to validate your applications and application bindings.
In the Project Explorer view, right-click in the window and click New > Project to open the New Project wizard.
Expand the CICS Resources folder, click CICS Application Project and click Next.
In the Project Name field, enter a name for the project. The Application properties section of the wizard is automatically populated, but you can edit the name, description, and version if required.
Click Next.
Select the CICS bundle projects that you want to include in the application. Ensure that you include the CICS bundle projects containing the statements of application entry points, the resource definitions for the application resources, and the statements of dependencies on other resources required by the application. Also include any CICS bundle projects containing policies that you want to deploy at the application level. You can use the application editor to add further CICS bundles after you create the application project.
Click Finish to create the project.

Results

The application project is created. The project contains a META-INF folder that has three XML files:

application.xml is the descriptor that contains the metadata for the application, including its description and version.
bundles.xml contains the list of CICS bundles that comprise the application, including the bundle ID and version.
manifest.xml is the manifest file for the project and identifies it as a CICS management bundle.

To edit the application project, expand the META-INF folder for the application and double-click on the application.xml or bundles.xml file. Use the application editor to change the application properties and add or remove CICS bundles from the application project. For a guide to using the application editor, see The application editor.

Note: When you have created and deployed your application project using the CICS Explorer, you must ensure proper management of the project source. The application project cannot be reconstructed from the exported data in zFS, and a failure of your workstation might cause the data to be lost. Ensure that your project is checked into a source code management system. When you use a source code management system that integrates with Eclipse, you can check projects in and out while you are working in the CICS Explorer.

What to do next

Create an Application Binding project to define how the application bundle is deployed in the platform.