What's New

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.
Start of changeAPAR 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.
End of change