CICS/AIX Questions
Leigh Compton
At first encounter, CICS for AIX can be quite frustrating for
someone with mainframe only skills. You'll need to develop some
good UNIX or AIX skills for administering a CICS for AIX environment
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Good operating system skills are mandatory for any systems
administrator, regardless of the platform (MVS or AIX). Once
you develop some basic AIX administrator skills and get familiar
with the environment, you'll find that there's a lot of commonality between the
CICS products on MVS and AIX.
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Now, let's address your questions.
>Has anybody attended any training for CICS/AIX that they can
>comment on or recommend?
The best course for system administrators, offered thru IBM
education, is:
CI670 TXSeries: CICS for AIX and its use as a Gateway
You should also consider taking one or more of the AIX
Administration courses in order develop the basic (pre-requisite) operating
system skills.
Another alternative is to follow the education and publications
curriculum as defined by the IBM Professional Certification
Program. You can visit the program's Web site at
http://www.ibm.com/Education/certify/index.phtml.
Please follow the curriculum for TXSeries CICS Monitor if you're
interested.
>Has anybody run across any books, white papers, or IBM Red Books
>about CICS/AIX that they can recommend?
Unfortunately, you'll find that books of most interest to you
(i.e., books that contain basic product information) are somewhat
out-of-date. However, there were a couple of publications written
for CICS/6000 that were pretty good:
CICS/6000 Application Development
Author: Neil Kolban
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 0-07-036023-5
AIX CICS/6000 Installation & Configuration (Guide to
Implementation)
IBM Redbook
Order No: GG24-4091
Addressing OLTP Solutions with CICS (Transaction Server for AIX)
IBM Redbook
Order No: SG24-4752
The best source of information for basic product information and
knowledge are the product manuals. CICS product manuals and IBM
Redbooks can be accessed via the Web at
http://www.software.ibm.com/ts/cics/library/
>Specific to my trials today, I'm trying to simply import a file
>into SFS (the qsamTest file mentioned in the admin ref), define
>it to the CICS region, and then be able to browse it. I've got
>it into SFS, but now I don't have the slightest idea how to define
>it to CICS, and the docs haven't been much help. I'm configured
>with no DCE support, using SFS for queue and file management until
>we get DB2 installed on the box.
The best way to learn is by example. I suggest that you install
the CICS sample programs for installation verification. This can
be accomplished by running the cicsivp command. The cicsivp command
will define and install several resources for your CICS region,
consisting of Transaction Definitions (TDs), Program Definitions
(PDs), a File Definition (FD), etc., along with defining a file to
your SFS called 'filea'. After running the cicsivp command, you
can use the AIX SMITty command to see how the various resources
were defined to your CICS region, including the SFS file. You
should be able to use the information for 'filea' as a model for
defining the qsamTest file to a CICS region.
In order to run the sample application, you'll need to cold start
your CICS region and use the cicsterm command for access to the
initial (MENU) transaction. The MENU transaction can be used to
add records to the SFS 'filea', and to inquire and browse the file
after records have been added.
Hope this helps and good luck with CICS for AIX.
Thearthur Hygh
IBM Dallas Systems Center
hy...@us.ibm.com