About this Course

In this 5-day, intermediate-level, instructor-led course, students learn how to design, code, and debug command-level CICS application programs for e-business or traditional environments. This course applies to the entire family of CICS products.

The course begins with an overview of the CICS application programming environment and the design of CICS applications. Subsequent topics include debugging, working with CICS queues, front-end programming, basic mapping, and event processing. In addition, optional units introduce topics such as CICS Web applications and business transaction services.

Hands-on exercises in COBOL or PL/I enable students to build their experience with CICS programming. Skills addressed in the exercises include using the CDEF utility to perform debugging, linking CICS applications to outside applications, and writing sample programs.

Audience Profile

This intermediate course is designed for application developers and analysts who design, code, and debug CICS command level applications.

At Course Completion

Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

• Design and develop application programs for CICS environments
• Design applications with separate presentation and business logics
• Describe the purpose of the CICS Clients
• Code CICS commands
• Pass and receive control between program modules
• Describe and compare the CICS COMMAREA and the CICS channel and container interface
• Prepare programs and run tests, including problem determination and resolution, using messages and online interactive debugging tools
• Access and modify Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) files, DB2 databases, temporary storage, and transient data queues
• Respond to normal and exception conditions from CICS commands
• Send and receive basic mapping support (BMS) maps

Prerequisites

Students should have:

• Working knowledge of the underlying operating system platforms
• Basic knowledge of CICS fundamentals (as taught in CICS 4.1 Fundamentals (WM804) / (VM804))
• COBOL or PL/1 application development skills
• Basic knowledge of application design and programming

Course Outline

1. Course introduction
2. CICS application programming environment
3. Designing CICS applications
4. Exercise: Introducing Worldwide Books Online
5. CICS command overview
6. Exercise: Using CICS Explorer
7. Exercise: Writing a pseudoconversational echo program
8. Debugging CICS applications
9. Exercise: Debugging applications using CEDF
10. CICS basic mapping support
11. Exercise: Writing the WB presentation program
12. CICS program-to-program control
13. Exercise: Completing the WB presentation program
14. Exercise: Linking to a CICS program from outside CICS
15. CICS data access
16. Exercise: Completing the WB customer program
17. CICS queues
18. Exercise: Completing the WB order program
19. Exercise: Enhancing the WB application (optional)
20. CICS front-end programming
21. Service flow and event processing
22. Course summary
23. Optional Unit: CICS Web applications
24. Optional Unit: CICS Business Transaction Services
25. Optional Unit: CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 4 Release 1