Designing and Programming CICS Applications: Integrating Existing Mainframe Applications with New Technologies

CICS is an application server that delivers industrial-strength, online transaction management for critical enterprise applications. Proven in the market for over 30 years with many of the world's leading businesses, CICS enables today's customers to modernize and extend their applications to take advantage of the opportunities provided by e-business while maximizing the benefits of their existing investments. Designing and Programming CICS Applications will benefit a diverse audience. It introduces new users of IBM's mainframe (OS/390) to CICS features. It shows experienced users how to integrate existing mainframe systems with newer technologies, including the Web, CORBA, Java, CICS clients, and Visual Basic; as well as how to link MQSeries and CICS. Each part of Designing and Programming CICS Applications addresses the design requirements for specific components and gives a step-by-step approach to developing a simple application. The book reviews the basic concepts of a business application and the way CICS meets these requirements. It then covers a wide range of application development technologies, including VisualAge for Java, WebSphere Studio, and Visual Basic. Users learn not only how to design and write their programs but also how to deploy their applications. Designing and Programming CICS Applications shows how to:

• Develop and modify existing COBOL applications
• Become familiar with the CICS Java environment and write a simple Java wrapper for a COBOL application
• Develop a web front end using servlets, JSP and JavaBeans.
• Link the web front end to an existing COBOL application using CORBA
• Write a Visual Basic application to develop a customer GUI
• Link an existing COBOL application using a CICS Client ECI call
• Develop a Java application using Swing as an MQSeries Client
• Use the MQSeries-CICS bridge to access an existing COBOL application

Whether for working with thousands of terminals or for a client/server environment with workstations and LANs exploiting modern technology such as graphical interfaces or multimedia, Designing and Programming CICS Applications delivers the power to create, modernize and extend CICS applications.

John Horswill is a member of IBM's CICS User Technololgy team at IBM in Hursley Park, U.K. He has been involved in delivering information on various platforms, including OS/390, AIX, Solaris, Digital Unix, HP, and Windows NT, for the past 11 years. Before joining IBM, he worked in Further Education in England for many years. He graduated from London University and completed an M.Sc. in Applied Cell Science and Virology at Brunel University before turning his attention to computing. If you can't find him in his office or working from home, he is probably in his garden or hopefully "at the top of a mountain on a clear day."