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 111 in San Jose, CA - you REALLY should have been there.
SHARE held its Summer 2008 conference in San Jose, CA, on August 10-15, 2008. 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 San Jose included CICS TS 3.2 and CICS Web Services. In-depth technical sessions covered in detail the various features of this latest release of the world's premier transaction processing system - CICS. Presentations were given by IBM developers and also by customers who participated in the CICS TS 3.2 closed and open beta programs.
SHARE 112 will be in Austin, TX - March 1-6, 2009
In March, SHARE will hold its Winter conference in Austin, TX, "The Live Music Capital of the World®". Now is the time to start thinking about making your plans to be there. Visit the SHARE web site for registration and housing forms, as they become available. The CICS Project has an extensive agenda in place for SHARE 112 in Austin, and a PDF of sessions will be posted here when finalized.
The entire SHARE agenda (including session abstracts) will be available on the main SHARE web site soon. To view all CICS Project sessions, select "Events by project" and then indicate "CICS".
Anniversary News
At SHARE in Austin, we'll be celebrating the 35th anniversary of the SHARE CICS Project, with a special session on Monday afternoon at 4:30pm presented by Barry Brooks, who will be retiring from SHARE after SHARE in Austin.
At SHARE 113 in Denver, CO, August 23-28, 2009, we'll be celebrating the 40th anniversary of CICS.
We hope you can join us for these two very special CICS anniversary celebrations!
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. On Friday at 11:00 a.m. at a session titled "CICS Nuts & Bolts and Gotchas", the project sponsors 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 session 1080 in the SHARE agenda, available on the main SHARE web site at 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, which occurs at 11:00 on Friday.
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).