Integration with CICS Explorer

When the CICS® IA plug-in is installed with CICS Explorer® and you right-click operational resources and definitions that are supported by CICS IA, the Dependencies menu option is available. You can use this menu to access the properties of the CICS IA plug-in from the CICS Explorer views.

If one or more plug-ins are installed in the CICS Explorer framework, menu options that are associated with those plug-ins are available from the CICS Explorer views. You do not need to change to a plug-in perspective to use the properties of the plug-in.

For example, in the following example CICS Explorer perspective, the CICSPlex® Explorer view lists all the CICS regions in the CICSPlex and indicates that three of the six CICS regions in that CICSplex are active. Three of the active CICS regions are flagged with the CICS IA CICS IA region icon icon that indicates that the CICS region is supported by CICS IA. The CICS Explorer Regions view is populated by the active CICS regions in the selected CSYSPLX01. The CICS IA Regions view, identified by the CICS IA region icon icon, is populated by the CICS region information collected by CICS IA. The CICS region identifiers in the CICS IA view correspond with the CICS region names in parentheses in the CICSplex Explorer view.

Screen capture of the CICS Explorer perspective.

When the CICS IA plug-in is connected to the DB2® database, the Dependencies menu shows options that are relevant to the type of resource. If the CICS IA plug-in is not connected, the Dependencies menu shows a dimmed No connection option. For more information about connection, see Configuring a CICS IA system connection.

The following examples illustrate the different CICS IA Dependencies menu options that are available.

Dependencies menu in the Regions view

Screen capture of Used By Regions, Used By Applications, Used By Programs, and Used By Transactions menu options.

Dependencies menu in the Tasks view

Screen capture of Uses Resources, Used By Regions, Used By Applications, Used by Programs, Used By Transactions and Show Execution menu options.

Dependencies menu in the Transactions view

Screen capture of Uses Resources, Used By Regions, Used By Applications, Used by Programs, Used By Transactions and Show Command Flow runs menu options.

Dependencies menu in the File view

Screen capture of Used By Regions, Used By Applications, Used By Programs, and Used By Transactions menu options.

When you work with operational resources and request CICS IA data, CICS IA uses the APPLID for the CICS region in which that operational resource exists. However, when you work with definitions, no APPLID is available for CICS IA to use, so all searches run across all CICS regions. The toolbar in the view where the results of your search are displayed indicates whether the search was run for a specific CICS region, or across all CICS regions.