IBM CICS Transaction Server (TS) 3.1: Systems Administration

Overview

This course is designed to help CICS System Administration personnel to understand CICS from initialisation through to shutdown, including maintenance, performance and availability.

This training may be available onsite; please contact us if you are interested.

Audience

This course is for personnel responsible for CICS Administration, experienced application programmers, system programmers and managers.

Skills Gained

Upon completion of this course attendees will appreciate how CICS works and be able to:

• Start, run and shut down a CICS system
• Perform CICS administration duties
• Understand resource naming conventions
• Use CEDA,CEDB, AND CEDC to manage CICS resources on-line.
• Understand & maintain the System Intialisation Table parameters including those relating to performance.

Prerequisites

Delegates are expected to have prior CICS experience

Course Outline

CICS/TS Overview

• Who might be involved
• What is CICS?
• Programming Interfaces (API. SPI, and XPI)
• Transaction flow
• Terminal versus non-terminal

Data Types

• Local Shared Resources (LSR)
• Temporary storage (TS)
• Transient Data (TD)
• CICS Log Manager
• Local and Global catalogues
• DB2
• User Application Files

CICS/TS Data Sets

• SYSIN
• STEPLIB
• DFHRPL
• DFHTEMP
• DFHINTRA
• DFHAUXTA and DFHAUXTB
• Extra-partition data sets
• Local and Global catalogue data sets
• CAVM
• DFHCXRF
• CICS Dump data sets
• System dump data sets
• C Language data sets
• DFHCSD
• CICS BTS data set
• DFHEJOS
• DFHCMACD
• Sample FILEA data set

System Initialization Parameters

• A look at the many SIT parameters and where they can be used, i.e. Macro, SYSIN or CONSOLE.

CICS/TS Start and Stop

• INITIAL
• COLD
• WARM
• STANDBY
• Effects of the Local and Global catalogues
• Started Task invocation
• Batch job submission
• CICS Shut down

Supplied Transactions

• CEMT
• CEBR
• CECI
• CEDA
• CEDF and CEDX
• CETR
• CMAC

Transaction Management

• A further review of SIT and other parameters which assist in the control and execution of tasks.

CICS/TS Resource Overview

• A review of CICS Resources and the means of definition with particular emphasis on:
• CEDA
• DFHCSDUP
• The LIST and GROUP structure
• Defining connections
• Defining DB2 resources
• Defining Files
• Defining Transactions
• Defining Programs

Connectivity

• Terminal versus non-Terminal revisited
• Multi-Region Options (MRO)
• The relationship between DB2 and CICS
• WEB support
• Batch Interface - EXCI
• Relating CICS to MQ

Security

• Ensuring CICS has the authority to access non-CICS resources
• ICHRIN03 versus STARTED
• Protecting the APPLID
• Impact of SEC=NO in the SIT
• Defining a default user
• Transaction security
• The granular security controls within RACF

Storage

• General z/OS Address Space structure
• Exploiting the Page-able Link Pack Area (PLPA)
• Impact of LSQA requirements
• Impact of z/OS GETMAIN requests
• DSA versus EDSA
• Sizing EDSA

Problem Determination

• Transaction dumps versus System Dumps
• DFHDU640 and its use
• The controls influencing system dump production
• CICS Trace facility
• DFHTU640 and its use

Tuning and Statistics

• A general review of statistics collection including SMF
• Practical use of the statistics reporting program
• A review of some common performance themes
• A brief review of GTF

Appendicies

• Teminology
• Sample Program and Map
• Auto-install
• Resource Definition Options