CICS Transaction Server - Concepts & Facilities

Objectives
On successful completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

• describe the basic concepts, facilities and terminology of CICS
• describe the CICS functions available for program development
• explain the role of CICS in a distributed environment
• describe the concepts of CICS
• identify the major management modules and tables
• trace and describe the flow of a CICS transaction
• identify the CICS facilities used for accessing data.

Who Should Attend
This course is appropriate for all applications programmers, operators, operations analysts, systems programmers, support personnel and managers who have little or no experience of CICS.
Prerequisites
A sound basic knowledge of IT. Attendance on the course 'The IBM Mainframe Computing Environment' or equivalent experience is recommended.
Duration
2 days

Course Code
CA
Contents
Introduction
CICS architecture and terminology; the CICS family; facilities available under CICS; principal components and resource definitions.


Data access
The various media types available to CICS: VSAM, temporary storage, transient data; Shared Data Tables and CFDTs.


CICS and the Internet
CICS Web Support (CWS); XML support; CICS Web Services and HTTP Client/Server/Pipeline support.


Intersystem communication
Connectivity options available between CICS family members and non-CICS systems: Multi Region Operation (MRO), Intersystem Communication (ISC), the External Call Interface (EXCI); configurations; load balancing and web basics.


Running CICS
Start-up and shutdown of CICS; emergency restart features; recovery/restart and data integrity.


CICS facilities
BMS; bridged txns; Interval Control; Transaction Isolation.


EXEC interface
Command format; Translator (traditional); Integrated Translator; EIB; conversational v pseudo-conversational design models; commareas; Channels & Connectors; Threadsafe and Affinity issues.


Business Txn Services
Introduction to BTS functionality.