Ibm Cics And The Coupling Facility Beyond The Basics

It's easy to look at the title of a book and think "that's old news" or "I already know all there is to know on that subject." But before you dismiss this publication, consider just how far the IBM® Parallel Sysplex® architecture has come. From the early days the mainframe has embraced a shared everything approach. The original designers coded IBM z/OS® (called IBM MVSTM or IBM OS/390® back then) with the functionality necessary for the operating system to create the repositories, manage the data flow, and ensure the integrity of the systems involved. From there, the middleware systems provided the exploitation and advanced functions to mature the technology. The component in the middle of all this great technology can easily be taken for granted. That is the IBM Coupling Facility. This IBM Redbooks® publication discusses both traditional uses for the IBM Coupling Facility technology and new ways to use it with products such as IBM CICS®. You can learn how to perform new functions and have these functions benefit from the scalability and availability achieved only in a mainframe ecosystem. Open standards are a large part of considerations today, as most companies run IT shops with a mix of technology components. As the world embraces these technologies, it is necessary to understand how to mix the world of mainframe architectures and products with other open architectures. This mix allows the best tool to be used to solve processing needs, at the right cost and service levels. Often the functions needed for modern processing can be found in house, in places where staff are skilled and that already deliver the robust production environments you count on daily. This book discusses these modern functions and how to achieve them with CICS use of the IBM Coupling Facility. You will learn how one IBM client, Walmart, took these concepts far beyond the original design as they share their experiences and even share code examples to help you get started. The last chapter of this book shows what can be achieved when a combination of old and new functions are use together. Even if you have familiarity with what could be done with the IBM Coupling Facility in the past, there is much to learn and deploy in a modern world. Those who are familiar with the IBM Coupling Facility might find the content of this book helpful. Additionally, readers who are considering how to use the IBM Coupling Facility technology within their environment might also find useful information in the chapters that follow

Abstract It's easy to look at the title of a book and think "that's old news" or "I already know all there is to know on that subject." But before you dismiss this publication, consider just how far the IBM® Parallel Sysplex® architecture has come. From the early days the mainframe has embraced a shared everything approach. The original designers coded IBM z/OS® (called IBM MVSTM or IBM OS/390® back then) with the functionality necessary for the operating system to create the repositories, manage the data flow, and ensure the integrity of the systems involved. From there, the middleware systems provided the exploitation and advanced functions to mature the technology. The component in the middle of all this great technology can easily be taken for granted. That is the IBM Coupling Facility. This IBM Redbooks® publication discusses both traditional uses for the IBM Coupling Facility technology and new ways to use it with products such as IBM CICS®. You can learn how to perform new functions and have these functions benefit from the scalability and availability achieved only in a mainframe ecosystem. Open standards are a large part of considerations today, as most companies run IT shops with a mix of technology components. As the world embraces these technologies, it is necessary to understand how to mix the world of mainframe architectures and products with other open architectures. This mix allows the best tool to be used to solve processing needs, at the right cost and service levels. Often the functions needed for modern processing can be found in house, in places where staff are skilled and that already deliver the robust production environments you count on daily. This book discusses these modern functions and how to achieve them with CICS use of the IBM Coupling Facility. You will learn how one IBM client, Walmart, took these concepts far beyond the original design as they share their experiences and even share code examples to help you get started. The last chapter of this book shows what can be achieved when a combination of old and new functions are use together. Even if you have familiarity with what could be done with the IBM Coupling Facility in the past, there is much to learn and deploy in a modern world. Those who are familiar with the IBM Coupling Facility might find the content of this book helpful. Additionally, readers who are considering how to use the IBM Coupling Facility technology within their environment might also find ...

This IBM® Redbooks® publication discusses practical uses of the IBM CICS asynchronous API capability. It describes the methodology, design and thought process used by a large client, Walmart, and the considerations of the choices made. The Redbooks publication provides real life examples and application patterns that benefit from the performance and scalability offered by the new API. The book discusses the homegrown methodology used by Walmart before the API was available and compares it with the design using the new API. A discussion of the process used to migrate older applications to begin using the new API is included so the reader will understand the ease of implementing the new API. A description of real world usage patterns describes the current production application Walmart has deployed as well as other patterns to give the reader a sense of what's possible applying creative thinking with technology improvements. Finally, a section is included on the areas to be considered as you begin to plan and implement asynchronous API capabilities. This book should be read by: Enterprise Architects searching for faster ways to service strategic applications across the enterprise. Solution Architects who want to better understand implementation possibilities for improved response times and better performance for CICS applications. CICS programmers looking to modernize and provide improved response times. This book is meant to be used in tandem with IBM Redbooks publication IBM CICS Asynchronous API: Concurrent Processing Made Simple, SG24-8411, which will provide the background and implementation instructions and commands for the API itself.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication describes the usage of Coupling Facility (CF) functions with the IBM System z® Personal Development Tool (zPDT). It describes the System z Coupling Application Developer Controlled Distribution, which is a Parallel Sysplex® "starter system" based on the AD-CD package and lists the exact steps taken to turn the normal AD-CD z/OS® system into a Parallel Sysplex base. This document assumes that the reader is familiar with basic zPDT usage and terminology, with z/OS, with the z/OS AD-CD system, with basic z/VM® usage, and with general Parallel Sysplex concepts. It is not intended as an introduction to any of these topics. This version of the document is based on z/VM 6.2 (as available to authorized users in an AD-CD package) and z/OS 1.13 (as available to authorized users in the January 2013 update of the AD-CD package).

IBM® CICS® Transaction Server (CICS TS) has been available in various guises for over 40 years, and continues to be one of the most widely used pieces of commercial software. This IBM Redbooks® publication helps application architects discover the value of CICS Transaction Server to their business. This book can help architects understand the value and capabilities of CICS Transaction Server and the CICS tools portfolio. The book also provides detailed guidance on the leading practices for designing and integrating CICS applications within an enterprise, and the patterns and techniques you can use to create CICS systems that provide the qualities of service that your business requires.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication pulls together diverse information regarding the best way to design, implement, and manage a Parallel Sysplex® to deliver the levels of performance and availability required by your organization. This book should be of interest to system programmers, availability managers, and database administrators who are interested in verifying that your systems conform to IBM best practices for a Parallel Sysplex environment. In addition to z/OS® and the sysplex hardware configuration, this book also covers the major IBM subsystems: CICS® DB2® IMSTM MQ WebSphere® Application Server To get the best value from this book, readers should have hands-on experience with Parallel Sysplex and have working knowledge of how your systems are set up and why they were set up in that manner.

This IBM Redbooks® publication gives a broad understanding of several important concepts that are used when describing IBM CICS Transaction Server (TS) for IBM z/OS (CICS TS) performance. This publication also describes many of the significant performance improvements that can be realized by upgrading your environment to the most recent release of CICS TS. This book targets the following audience: Systems Architects wanting to understand the performance characteristics and capabilities of a specific CICS TS release. Capacity Planners and Performance Analysts wanting to understand how an upgrade to the latest release of CICS TS affects their environment. Application Developers wanting to design and code highly optimized applications for deployment into a CICS TS environment. This book covers the following topics: A description of the factors that are involved in the interaction between IBM z® Systems hardware and a z/OS software environment. A definition of key terminology that is used when describing the results of CICS TS performance benchmarks. A presentation of how to collect the required data (and the methodology used) when applying Large Scale Performance Reference (LSPR) capacity information to a CICS workload in your environment. An outline of the techniques that are applied by the CICS TS performance team to achieve consistent and accurate performance benchmark results. High-level descriptions of several key workloads that are used to determine the performance characteristics of a CICS TS release. An introduction to the open transaction environment and task control block (TCB) management logic in CICS TS, including a reference that describes how several configuration attributes combine to affect the behavior of the CICS TS dispatcher. Detailed information that relates to changes in performance characteristics between successive CICS TS releases, covering comparisons that relate to CICS TS V4.2, V5.1, V5.2, V5.3, V5.4, and V5.5. The results of several small performance studies to determine the cost of using a specific CICS functional area.

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we discuss CICS®, which stands for Customer Information Control System. It is a general-purpose transaction processing subsystem for the z/OS® operating system. CICS provides services for running an application online where, users submit requests to run applications simultaneously. CICS manages sharing resources, the integrity of data, and prioritizes execution with fast response. CICS authorizes users, allocates resources (real storage and cycles), and passes on database requests by the application to the appropriate database manager, such as DB2®. We review the history of CICS and why it was created. We review the CICS architecture and discuss how to create an application in CICS. CICS provides a secure, transactional environment for applications that are written in several languages. We discuss the CICS-supported languages and each language's advantages in this Redbooks publication. We analyze situations from a system programmer's viewpoint, including how the systems programmer can use CICS facilities and services to customize the system, design CICS for recovery, and manage performance. CICS Data access and where the data is stored, including Temporary storage queues, VSAM RLS, DB2, IMSTM, and many others are also discussed.