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I've created several Java applications for CICS and used CICS Explorer and deployed them to CICS TS 4.2. Everything I've read says to deploy in this manner, but what if I want to create an application to deploy to a 3rd party environment? According to everything from IBM I need to use CICS Explorer. I've actually been able to avoid CICS explorer with a nasty hack that involves creating the bundle on Z/OS, downloading the bundle, editing the cics.xml file and redeploying elsewhere. Works but the whole process leaves something to be desired.

Is there a documented alternative to using CICS Explorer to deploy CICS Java apps? I did read something about the ability to deploy osgi bundles that are not cics bundles but I've not been able to find any more information on this.

mister270
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3 Answers3

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Thanks for you question. Before I can answer I have a couple of my own if you don't mind. Firstly when you say you want to deploy an application to “a 3rd party environment” what do you mean; is this a different CICS system or something else? Secondly what issues do you have with using CICS Explorer to create and deploy the application?

Matthew Webster
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    Thank you. I want to be able to develop Java applications for CICS and deploy them to customer mainframes. Our customers may or may not have CICS Explorer installed and I may not have the credentials to access their mainframe environment. Often these applications will be deployed to test regions first then to production later by company personnel, again without the benefit of CICS Explorer. Finally it seems that using CICS Explorer exposes source code which we do not want to do. So I'm looking for a deployment alternative other than CICS Explorer, and not having much luck find one. – mister270 Dec 18 '14 at 14:31
  • So I think you'll agree that developing the application in the first place is best done with CICS Explorer whether you are creating events, Policy or a Java program. However, am I right in thinking you want to create a package that can be deployed by you or someone else to a test region then subsequently promoted to production? Also you feel that CICS Explorer is not required in these situations and may not be available anyway? – Matthew Webster Dec 19 '14 at 10:31
  • I want to find out if there is a way to deploy a cics bundle without using CICS Explorer. Actually there is. Deploy the bundle with explorer, download the bundle, open the cics.xml file and change the jvmserver attribute to the name of the jvmserver you want to deploy to, then upload the bundle to a location in the new environment. But that's not very nice. Is there an alternative? The reasons I want to do this are irrelevant as are my feelings about CICS Explorer. – mister270 Dec 19 '14 at 17:59
  • So it seems your biggest problem is changing the JVM server name when deploying a Java application to a new environment. This is a well understood requirement and something we are working on (please see https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=viewChangeRequest&CR_ID=40997). If you would like more information please sign up to developerWorks and perhaps vote on the RFE. You might consider joining one of out beta programmes (see http://www-01.ibm.com/software/htp/cics/betas.html). Also keep an eye on CICSdev where we regularly post articles. – Matthew Webster Dec 22 '14 at 10:52
  • Thank you for the urls. I voted for the fix request at Developer World but that doesn't seem to be coming real soon. Looks like the answer is "No there is not alternative" (other than the hack I described. – mister270 Dec 22 '14 at 17:36
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You can maybe use the CICS build toolkit, this allows you to create/build a deployable CICS bundle project structure from an Eclipse project. It also allows you to modify specific variables in CICS bundle resource attributes using values in a properties file, this includes the JVM server name.

Phil Wakelin
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  • After all this time I didn't expect an answer. Thanks, I'll look at this. – mister270 Jan 20 '17 at 18:27
  • The CICS build toolkit was released in June 2016 with CICS TS V5.3, but is also supported with CICS TS V4 onwards, and can be downloaded here http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24041185 – Phil Wakelin Jan 23 '17 at 12:20
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Time passes and, from 2019, there's another solution to this question.

If you build your Java using Maven or Gradle, you can use the CICS bundle Maven plugin or CICS bundle Gradle plugin. They take your Java module and wrap it up into a CICS bundle ready for you to deploy to either CICS or an artifact repository.

The plugins work for any release of CICS TS, but if you also have CICS TS 5.6 and above then you can use the CICS bundle deployment API directly from those plugins to also deploy to CICS as part of your development build.

Ben Cox
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