CICS V5.3 Fundamentals

In this comprehensive course, you learn about all the concepts and facilities of IBM CICS Transaction Server V5.3. After completing this course, you have the prerequisite knowledge for all of the follow-on CICS courses that IBM Training offers.

This course gives you a solid background in the transactions and application programming interfaces (APIs) that are supplied with CICS. You learn about general guidelines and programming aids that support application development for CICS, including the features of CICSPlex System Manager, working with the CICS Explorer graphical tools, how CICS protects its resources, and managing data integrity. You also learn about the facilities that enable CICS to connect and communicate with other systems, and how to design and write CICS applications.

Hands-on exercises throughout the course are designed to reinforce the lecture material, and give you practical experience in working with the basics of CICS transaction processing and resource management. The exercises build skills in areas such as using the supplied transactions and the CICS Explorer, defining and managing CICS resources, CICS web services and interfaces, and debugging CICS applications.

This course is applicable to all releases of CICS TS and includes the related Version 5 updates for CICS TS V5.2 and CICS TS V5.3.

For information about other related courses, visit the IBM Training website:

ibm.com/training

This CICS TS V5.3 course is designed for IT personnel who have little or no CICS experience.

Before taking this course, you should have basic knowledge of data processing and an IBM operating system. Some programming experience in a high-level language like COBOL or Java is helpful.

After completing this course, you should be able to:

• Describe the role of CICS in a business transaction environment and its support for modern interfaces
• Identify the major business advantages of CICS TS V5.3
• Outline the flow of a typical CICS transaction
• Describe the functions that the primary CICS supplied transactions perform
• Use the CICS master terminal transaction (CEMT) to query and control system resources
• Describe various ways of defining resources in CICS
• Use transactions that CICS supplies to define and manage resources
• Explain how CICS stores and manages resource definitions
• Describe the features, advantages, and use of the CICS and z/OS Explorer
• Use the CICS Explorer to connect, navigate, and manage resources
• List the CICS recoverable resources and how they provide data integrity
• Describe CICS transaction backout and forward recovery
• Describe the facilities that CICS provides for maintaining data integrity
• Describe CICS support for databases, Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) files, queuing, and IBM MQ
• Use the CICS transactions and CICS Explorer to create and explore CICS queues, files, and database resources
• Describe how CICS implements security, the types of security, and what it uses for user identification and authentication
• List the types of CICS starts and shutdowns
• List the facilities that CICSPlex System Manager provides to manage the CICS topologies and its role in cloud enablement
• Describe the functions of presentation, business, and data access logic
• Define the role and use of the COMMAREAs and CHANNELs in CICS applications
• Show how CICS basic mapping support (BMS) supports the 3270 display
• Describe the different types of CICS application designs and supported programming architectures for both procedural and object-oriented languages
• Describe how CICS implements web services support for SOAP and JSON services
• Use the CICS Explorer to explore CICS web services
• Use Rational Developer for System z to explore map resources
• Describe the syntax of a CICS command and how to handle exception processing
• Use the transactions that CICS supplies for testing and debugging
• Describe the facilities that are available in CICS for intercommunication

Course introduction
Introducing CICS
CICS supplied transactions
Exercise: CICS supplied transactions
Defining CICS resources
Exercise: Defining CICS resources
Introducing the CICS Explorer
Exercise: Using the CICS Explorer
Managing data integrity
Data access
Exercise: Exploring data resources
CICS security
Startup and shutdown
Exercise: Managing CICS resources
CICSPlex System Management overview
Designing CICS applications
Exercise: Exploring CICS web services
Writing CICS programs
Exercise: Reviewing CICS BMS maps
Testing and debugging CICS programs
Exercise: Debugging applications with EDF
CICS intercommunication
Course summary