CICS® Configuration Manager provides
a single point of control for editing, reporting, and migrating CICS resource
definitions across an enterprise.
The main components of CICS Configuration Manager are the server, which is a CICS application
that can read from and write to CICS system
definition (CSD) files and CICSPlex® SM contexts, and the
supplied clients: an interactive
ISPF dialog interface and a batch command interface. The clients communicate
with the server by exchanging SOAP messages over an HTTP network.
For a more detailed description of these and other components of CICS Configuration Manager, see Components.
As an alternative to using the supplied clients, you
can use CICS Explorer® with the CICS Configuration Manager plug-in, or you
can develop your own clients. CICS Explorer with the CICS Configuration Manager plug-in provides
an Eclipse-based graphical user interface to many of the CICS Configuration Manager functions available
in the supplied ISPF user interface. CICS Explorer also provides an
integrated interface to various CICS functions and other CICS tools. For more information about CICS Explorer and the CICS Configuration Manager plug-in, see www.ibm.com/cics/explorer/.
Figure 1. Overview of CICS Configuration Manager main components
You can use CICS Configuration Manager to
perform the following tasks:
- Edit resource definitions in a CSD file or a context
- Compare resource definitions, groups, ResGroups, lists,
and ResDescs
- List sets of runtime resource definitions from active CICS regions,
or sets of candidate resource definitions stored in CSD files or contexts,
or compare these sets in any combination; for example, to help understand
the effect of cold-starting a CICS region, you can compare a
set of runtime resource definitions with a set of candidate resource
definitions
- Report resource definitions that match your search
criteria, across one or more CSD files or contexts
- Migrate resource definitions from one CSD file or context to another
- Migrate commands that operate on resource definitions
(for example, to delete obsolete resource definitions)
- Systematically migrate resource definitions and commands
through multiple CICS environments
- Optionally: require approval from authorized users before allowing
a migration
- Back out migrations
- Audit changes to resource definitions
- Recover historical versions of resource definitions
- Perform actions on active CICS regions:
- Install resources
- Discard resources
- "Newcopy" or "phase-in" (make new versions
of resources available)
- Export and import resource definitions and commands
between separately managed remote sites