The functional enhancements and changes for this release are summarized
below.
- Product renaming and availability
- The product has been renamed to CICS® Service Flow Runtime and
is available as part of the free CICS Service Flow Feature.
The
feature includes the Service Flow Modeler tooling
and the enhanced CICS Service
Flow Runtime code.
- Changes to post-installation setup
- The post-installation setup and installation verification procedures (IVP)
have been simplified to enable you to quickly install the product and verify
that the runtime environment is correctly configured. New samples have been
created to run the set up and the IVP, as well as performing the necessary
customization on the runtime libraries once created.
In addition, new messages
and abend codes have been added for the IVP to help with identifying problems
in the runtime environment.
- New transaction
- A new supplied transaction CMAA is provided to run the IVP.
- Tracing
- Tracing has been added to help with diagnosing problems.
- Support for bidirectional languages
- BIDI support has been added through the addition of two modules, FEJBDTRN
and FEJBDTRE. The modules are called dynamically, enabling updates to the
modules to occur without requiring you to regenerate or recompile the service
flows. A new error message has also been added to help you diagnose BIDI problems.

APAR PK32131 has introduced a number
of additional enhancements:
- Support for WebSphere® Developer
for System z® version
7
- With the release of WebSphere Developer
for System
z version
7, CICS Service Flow Runtime has been updated
to support adapter services that are modeled and deployed in this new release
of the tooling. The Service Flow Modeler is
now available in the Enterprise Service Tools perspective of the tooling.
- Support for outbound Web services in adapter services
- You can now use the existing support in CICS to invoke a Web service from
an adapter service, as well as exposing an adapter service as a Web service.
To support outbound Web service requests, there is a new Web services server
adapter called DFHMASWS. This runs under transaction CMAO and enables an adapter
service to send Web service requests to service providers using the existing
Web services support in CICS. The adapter sends Web service requests using
a requester mode pipeline in the CICS region.
When you model the flow with
an outbound Web service request, you specify which pipeline pickup directory
to save the generated Web service binding file. Sample pipelines are provided
to allow you to quickly deploy adapter services that are making Web service
requests or are acting as Web service providers. The required PIPELINE resources
are created as part of the post-installation steps.
Outbound Web services
are only available when you model, generate and deploy flows using WebSphere Developer
for System
z version
7.
- Support for channels and containers
- You can now invoke CICS Service Flow Runtime using
a channel and containers when using a distributed program link (DPL). Several
combinations of containers are allowed depending on your requirements. You
can either use a simplified message header structure to invoke the deployed
adapter service, or pass in the DFHMAH header structure and application data
in one container, in the same way as a COMMAREA. Containers can also be used
for passthrough processing.
- A new DPL server adapter
- The DPL server adapter DFHMASDP performs all distributed program links
for an adapter service that has been generated using WebSphere Developer
for System
z version
7. It runs under transaction CMAS.
- Improvements to the management of adapter services
- A BTS PROCESSTYPE resource is now defined for every adapter service. The
resource name matches the request name of the flow. This enables you to manage
adapter services once they are deployed and running in CICS Service Flow Runtime,
by installing, enabling, disabling, and discarding the PROCESSTYPE resource
for a particular adapter service.
The job to update the properties file
has a new
MODE parameter. There are two values for this
parameter:
- OVERWRITE
- This value specifies that you want to overwrite any existing adapter services
or server adapters that might already be defined in the properties file with
the same name. For example, this value would be useful if you are updating
an existing adapter service.
- SAFE
- This is the default value. When you run the job to update the properties
file to deploy a new adapter service, and an adapter service already exists
with the same name, you get an error and the adapter service is not defined
in the properties file.
If you specify any other value, or if you specify no value
at all, the default is assumed. This also applies to all adapter services
that are already deployed in your CICS region.
- Validation of the post-installation procedure DFHMAINJ
- The parameter values that you specify in the post-installation job DFHMAINJ
are now validated. This ensures that any problems are highlighted immediately,
before the runtime libraries are customized. The job output also includes
additional error messages to provide you with information on which parameter
is in error. If there is an error in a parameter value, the libraries are
not customized.
- Improvements to vector logging
- The vector logging function now uses two files, DFHMALVA and DFHMALVB,
instead of one file (DFHMALVF) to record the flow of information through a
Link3270 server adapter. One file is always active, and the other is either
empty or contains old data. When DFHMALVA is full, the vector logging automatically
swaps to use DFHMALVB. When DFHMALVB is full, the vector logging swaps back
to DFHMALVA, deleting the old content before beginning to write to the file.
This means that the entire flow of data can now be analyzed for a Link3270
server adapter.
- A new process for applying maintenance to the runtime environment
- There is a new method for applying all maintenance to the runtime environment,
using a supplied batch job called DFHMAINA.
- Additional diagnostics
- There are new messages and additional trace points to help with troubleshooting
problems.
