The CICS Project is chartered to provide an exchange forum for users of the IBM CICS family of products and their ancillary services. The goals of this project include providing the membership with technical education, keeping them informed of new developments within the CICS family of products, promoting dialogue between members and IBM and among the membership itself, and submitting requirements and papers to IBM on technical needs and business directions in the CICS product line.
CICS Project News
SHARE 113 in Denver, CO - you REALLY should have been there.
SHARE held its Summer 2009 conference on August 23-28 in beautiful downtown Denver, CO.
The CICS Project agenda was jam packed with technical sessions from IBM and a number of "user experience" sessions on various subjects.
The major topics in Austin included CICS TS 4.1, the CICS TS Explorer, Event Processing, Web 2.0, CICS Web Services, Performance and Debugging. In-depth technical sessions covered in detail the various features of the latest release of the world's premier transaction processing system - CICS. Presentations were given by IBM developers and also by customers who already have CICS TS 4.1 in production.
SHARE 114 will be in Seattle, WA - March 14-18, 2010
In March of 2010, SHARE will hold its Winter conference in Seattle, WA. Now is the time to start thinking about making your plans to be there. Visit the SHARE web site for information about registration and housing, which will be available several months in advance of the event. The CICS Project has an extensive agenda in place for SHARE 114 in Denver, and a PDF of the CICS sessions will be available soon at:
http://nermvs.cns.ufl.edu/~sfw/share114/grid_attendee_share114.pdf
The entire SHARE agenda (including session abstracts) will also be available soon on the main SHARE web site. To view all CICS Project sessions, select "Events by project" and then indicate "CICS".
Anniversary News
At SHARE in Denver, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of CICS, with a special session on Monday afternoon at 4:30pm presented by Paul Kettley of IBM, who presented a fun and fact filled session about the history, technology, and people that have helped make CICS one of the most successful software products of all time.
Requirements News
The SHARE Online Requirements System is now online and available from the SHARE web site. The new system is easy to use and is a big improvement over the previous system. We hope that this will result in increased participation in the SHARE requirements process. Information on how to access the requirements system is contained below. The requirements process is one of the benefits of SHARE membership not available from other conferences, such as the CICS Technical Conference. Don't miss out on this opportunity to have an influence on IBM CICS development.
Access to the New Requirements System: http://www.share.org/Reqs4Logon.cfm
Logon Information
One of the benefits of the new system is that there is no longer a need to have a separate "Requirements" Userid and Password. The new system makes use of your "SHARE Member's Only" Userid and Password.
First Time Users
If you were already setup with access to SHARE CICS Requirements under the OLD system, you should have been migrated over during the CICS Project migration.
If you have NEVER had SHARE CICS Requirements access, the first time you logon to the New Requirements System you will have to fill out an "Areas of Interest Profile". If you seloect CICS as one of your areas of interest, a request for access approval will be sent to the CICS Project Requirements Coordinator. The system then sends an e-mail to let the Requirements Coordinator know that there are pending CICS access requests. As soon as the Requirements Coordinator approves you, you will be able to Create/View/Discuss/Vote on CICS requirements.
NOTE: If you select any other areas of interest (ex: MVS, DB2, etc) the same process will be followed under the admininstration of that Project's specific Requirements Coordinator.
CICS Nuts & Bolts and Gotchas
If you are going to be at SHARE, here's an excellent opportunity for you to participate. We're going to continue one of our most popular sessions titled "CICS Nuts & Bolts and Gotchas". It's a forum for people to exchange tips, techniques, and problem solutions which have occurred in their own shops. Many attendees have told us that this session alone makes the trip to SHARE worthwhile. For a further description of this session, read the abstract for this session in the SHARE agenda, available on the main SHARE web site at http://www.share.org/.
Have you encountered a strange or challenging problem or quirk in your CICS region(s) lately? Did you find the solution? Why not SHARE your experience with others so that they may avoid fighting the same problem. Your participation is not difficult nor does it require a lot of preparation. Simply make a one-page foil describing the problem, the symptoms, and the solution which you can use at the session to describe the situation to others. We will then add your name to the list of participants for that session and give you a few minutes to present it.
If you are interested in participating in the next CICS Nuts & Bolts and Gotchas session, send a note to Ed Addison via email letting him know that you wish to participate and what you will be discussing. Ed is coordinating the session input so that everyone gets on the agenda.
We welcome and encourage your participation in this session. If you are contributing, please be sure to make your travel plans so that you will be able to attend this session.
User Experience Speakers Needed
The CICS Project has always taken pride in the quality of the program of technical sessions that we put on at each SHARE. At every conference, the volunteers in the project spend several hours deciding what topics we need to cover and trying to put together the agenda for the next meeting. We attempt to offer a good mix of presentations from IBM speakers and from customers. The most difficult task we face is finding speakers for "User Experience" sessions. Often we would like to hear from a customer who is using a particular feature or product. More often than not, we have to pull our user experience speakers from the ranks of the ribbon wearers on the project. Many times, however, we find that we do not have anyone who can speak on the subject we are interested in. Of course, we always have an abundance of presentation offerings from IBM and other vendors, but those sessions tend to be biased from the vendor's point of view. You can help us keep our program from becoming overly slanted toward the vendor perspective. We need the information they provide, but we also need the "real story" from the customers who install and use the products in production environments.
Are you working on something you think other CICS folks would be interested in? Are you making use of the new features IBM has introduced into the CICS product in recent releases? Did you just complete a project you are especially proud of? Do you have experience with leading edge technology and the most recent releases of CICS? If the answer to any of these questions is "yes", we would love to hear from you. We are always searching for users who want to share their ideas and experience, either as individual session speakers or participants in panel discussions. If you would be willing to SHARE your experiences with others, please contact one of the CICS Project Officers listed below. We would love to have you as a speaker. SHARE is your organization, and we encourage you to become an even more active part of it. Many members will testify "the more you put into it, the more you get out of it."
Future SHARE Meetings (dates/locations)
Useful Links to Interesting Places
Here are some sites on the World Wide Web that we believe will be of interest to those involved with CICS:
IBM CICS Home Page
IBM Hursley Laboratories
IBM CICS Service & Support Information and Tips
IBM Transaction Systems SupportPacs Library
IBM S/390 Technical Support Technical Information Site
IBM Redbooks
IBMLink via the Web
IBM Software Technical Support
IBM Websphere
IBM Whois - search for an employee's email address
Mid-Atlantic CICS User Group
Toronto CICS Association
Mainframe-related discussion groups exist on a variety of topics, including CICS. These can be very useful sources of information and assistance with problems. To subscribe to the CICS-L discussion group (listserv), send an e-mail message to listserv@listserv.uga.edu where the contents of the message is:
'SUBSCRIBE CICS-L yourfirstname yourlastname' (without the quotes).
Once subscribed, you will receive (via e-mail) all postings made to the CICS-L list.
It is also possible to view the CICS-L archives.
CICS Project Officers
The following volunteers are responsible for coordinating the activities of the CICS Project. If you wish to contact any of these individuals click on the mailto link in the list below and you will be presented with a web page on which you can compose a short e-mail note. We are especially interested in any sessions that you would like to see at future SHARE meetings. Please direct them to the Project Manager(s).