CICS® Configuration Manager offers
the following benefits:
- A single point of control for resource definitions across your
enterprise
- From a single TSO/ISPF session, you can change resource definitions
in any CSD file or CICSPlex® SM context that is
accessible to CICS Configuration Manager.
- A common interface to CSD files and CICSPlex SM
contexts
- In CICS Configuration Manager,
you define a CICS configuration for
each CSD file or CICSPlex SM context that you want to manage.
Thereafter, you refer only to the CICS configuration; CICS Configuration Manager transparently handles
the differences between CSD files and CICSPlex SM
contexts.
- Enhanced editing of resource definitions, using a TSO/ISPF interface
- The resource definition editor provided by CICS Configuration Manager has many advantages
over the resource definition online (RDO) CEDA transaction provided
by CICS. For example:
- Edit resource definitions while the CICS regions
that use those definitions are active or inactive.
- Edit RDO definitions in CSD files or BAS definitions in CICSPlex SM
data repositories.
- Get extensive field-sensitive help for all resource definition
attributes.
- View, compare, and recover historical versions of
resource definitions.
- Filter resource definitions using a combination of
criteria: list, group, type, and name; attribute values; and similarities
between resource definitions (for example, to identify duplicates).
- Explore the logical hierarchy of a CICS configuration.
For example, you can expand a CICS configuration to show its
lists (or ResDescs, for CICSPlex SM); expand a list
to show its groups (or ResGroups); expand a group to show its resource
definitions; and expand a resource definition to show its attributes.
Figure 1. Expanding
a CICS configuration hierarchy
- Copy a set of resource definitions across multiple CICS configurations
with a single command
- In CICS Configuration Manager,
you can define one or more pairs of source and target ("from" and "to") CICS configurations
as a migration scheme, and
you can group resource definitions into a change
package. With a single command, you can migrate a change
package according to a migration scheme, copying or
moving a set of resource definitions across multiple CICS configurations,
regardless of whether the CICS configurations refer to CSD
files or contexts. You can also back out (undo) a
migration with a single command.
- Transform resource definitions during migration
- For each pair of source and target CICS configurations
in a migration scheme, you can select a set of transformation
rules. These rules can adjust a resource definition during
migration to match its target environment.
For example, if a resource
definition in your development environment specifies a file as SYSDEV.VSAM.FILEA,
but the same file in the test environment is named SYSTEST.VSAM.FILEA,
then you can define a rule to transform file names that match the
mask *DEV.* to *TEST.*.
You can also use transformation
rules to search and replace within a single CICS configuration,
by using a migration scheme with the same source and target CICS configuration.
You
can specify criteria that limit the resource definitions to which
a transformation rule applies. You can also specify processing options
for a rule, to allow or disallow further rules to be applied, or to
exclude certain resource definitions from migration.
- Detect unexpected changes to resource definitions
- Before migrating a change package, you must mark it as "ready",
indicating that you want no further edits to its resource definitions
prior to migration.
If you attempt to migrate or install a change
package that is marked as "ready", but the resource definitions
in the source CICS configurations have subsequently changed,
or the migration scheme has changed, then CICS Configuration Manager does not allow
the migration. This protects you from migrating unexpected changes.
- Optionally: require approval before migrating
- You can associate an approval profile with
each change package, reflecting its sensitivity or potential impact
(such as minor, major, or emergency). An approval profile specifies
up to five approver roles for
each migration scheme, identifying the types of user (such as developer,
tester, or manager) who must approve a change package before it can
be migrated. In addition to being marked as ready, each change package
must be approved by all of the applicable approver roles before it
can be migrated.
- Report resource definitions that match specified criteria
- Select from a set of predefined criteria, such as "transactions
using program name" (where all you have
to specify is the program name), or define your own combination of
criteria.
- Compare resource definitions
- Compare resource definitions from one or more CICS configurations,
filtered by name, type, and group. For each resource definition, the
comparison shows a checksum of predetermined attribute values. Identical
checksums indicate identical attribute values; different checksums
indicate that some attribute values are different.
If you notice
that two resource definitions have different checksums, then you can
select the resource definitions, and compare their attribute values
side-by-side, with differences highlighted.
Figure 2. Compare resource definitions side-by-side
- Undo or redo changes to resource definitions
- Whenever you use CICS Configuration Manager to change (create,
update, or delete) a resource definition, CICS Configuration Manager records the change
in its journal. For each change, CICS Configuration Manager records the state
of the resource definition before the change (before image)
and the state after the change (after image). These before/after
images are known collectively as historical versions. You can view,
compare, and recover historical versions. You
can recover historical versions individually, or you
can specify criteria to identify a set of changes, and then either
reinstate the before images (to undo the changes) or the after images
(to redo the changes).
Figure 3. CICS Configuration Manager records resource
definition changes in a journal
- Report changes to resource definitions: what, when, who, how,
and why
- The CICS Resource
Definition Changes Report shows
changes to resource definitions that CICS Configuration Manager records in its
journal. You can use this report to help audit changes: what resource
definitions were changed, including attribute details; when the change
occurred; who made the change; and how they made the change, such
as by editing the resource definition, or by copying a resource definition,
or by migrating a change package. If you use change packages to migrate
resource definitions, this report can also help answer why changes
were made, based on the change package description ("Payroll updates
for tax act") and the migration scheme used ("development to
test").
- Help answer questions such as: what will be the effect of a cold
start?
- CICS Configuration Manager batch deployment analysis reports
enable you to list or compare sets of installed resource definitions
collected from an active CICS region, and sets of resource
definitions that CICS would install when cold starting a CICS region.
These reports help answer questions such as:
- What changes will the next cold start introduce?
- Will adding a new group or list to the installation group sequence
create problems at CICS start time?
- Are my cloned CICS regions the same?
- Are these resource definitions consistent with one another?
For the last question above, CICS Configuration Manager performs a superset
of the checks performed by the CICS CEDA
CHECK command. In addition to producing a batch report of these checks,
you can perform these checks via the CICS Configuration Manager ISPF dialog, and
then interactively explore and solve any issues with the resource
definitions.
You can define sets of resource definitions by
specifying a group sequence that is similar to the CICS system
initialization parameter GRPLIST, but with more flexibility: you can
define a combination of lists and individual groups, and you can combine
these with resource definitions from a CICSPlex SM
data repository. This enables you to easily and quickly simulate different
scenarios, such as the effect of changes to the group sequence at CICS start
time, without making those changes to running CICS systems.
- Integrate CICS Configuration Manager with
your own applications
- Batch and SOAP interfaces allow you to use the features of CICS Configuration Manager in your own applications.