IBM Impact 2014

I am fortunate once again to be attending IBM Impact. The general session again focused on mobile, and featured speakers from Tangerine Bank, Square, and Daimler Car2Go. Live demos did not go too well due to apparent networking issues, but speakers covered nicely.

Here are some of my biggest take-aways from today’s CICS sessions:

• The 5.2 Developer Trial can be turned into a full version without re-installing.
• The mobile feature pack introduced in 5.1 is integrated into the base in 5.2.
• “Simple” Occurs Depending On is supported in 5.2 web services.
• 5.2 has something called Multi-Versioning, which allows a new version of a program to be implemented, and taken out, quickly. It is possible to have the new version and old version available simultaneously.
• Of course, as with every new release of CICS in recent years, more things are moving above the bar for virtual storage relief, and more commands are threadsafe.
• It was not explicitly stated, but all indications are that the CICSPlex WUI is going away after V5. It is time to really start using the CICS Explorer, if you’re not already using it.

I had a great one-on-one “Lunch and Learn” session on the CICS Explorer. It was originally slated for myself and one other person, but they were a no-show. The session was a good review of many of the things I already knew, and I picked up a couple of new tidbits. The one-on-one and Lunch and Learn sessions alone pretty much make the trip for Impact worthwhile.

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Try CICS TS 5.1 – For FREE!

If you are running anything other than CICS TS 5.1, you may wish to consider installing IBM’s Free CICS TS 5.1 Developer Trial. You can install 5.1 in a test environment and check out all of the new features; the only limitations are: limited time (though you can download a new copy and install it again at no cost), some performance and capacity restrictions (to ensure that it is used only in a test environment), and licensing (you agree to only use it to test, and not for production work).

IBM has done us a tremendous favor here – take advantage of it! Whether to just check out the new features, or to “pre-install” it to prepare for upgrading to TS 5.1 (which you can do with this trial and not have the clock ticking on having two releases installed), you can’t beat free!

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Dynamic Scripting Now Supported in CICS/TS 4.2

IBM had stated in the CICS/TS 4.2 Announcement Letter that it intended to provide support for dynamic scripting in 4.2, and now it has come through on this promise. Feature Pack for Dynamic Scripting 1.1 is now available for those running CICS/TS 4.2.

Dynamic Scripting, introduced as an unsupported SupportPac in CICS/TS 3.2, and supported in CICS/TS 4.1 as a Feature Pack, opens up CICS for the 4 million plus PHP and Groovy developers, and provides mainframe CICS shops with an environment that can be used to quickly develop prototypes and/or build productivity applications such as dashboards or widgets, most often associated with Intel or UNIX servers.

The availability of a version of the Feature Pack for CICS/TS 4.2 is welcome news for those of us curious about the 4.1 Feature Pack, but hesitant to invest time in it until it was supported in CICS/TS 4.2. Now that dynamic scripting has been supported in consecutive CICS/TS releases, it must be taken seriously as a viable option for PHP development!

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