Scope: All US based SMCs and supported client data centers.
Effective Date: June 1, 2012
Group Name: U.S. Leveraged Mainframe – CICS Support
Affected Locations: Plano, Auburn Hills, Charlotte, Sacramento, Tulsa, Con-Way and AHOLD complexes.
Summary: CICS Transaction Server 4.2 will be the next version of CICS Transaction Server to become the standard software offering by HPES.
Justification: The current standard offering by HPES of CICS Transaction Server, release 3.2, was released in 2007. Since then IBM has released TS 4.1 and TS 4.2, each with new and improved functionality. Upgrading now will allow users to exploit newer technologies not available in Transaction Server 3.2 and will ensure continued software currency for years to come.
Benefit to Users: The following are some of the new release highlights :
TCPIP: CICS TS V4.2 now supports the function shipping of DPL, transaction routing, asynchronous starts, file control, transient data, and temporary storage requests between CICS regions over a TCP/IP network using an IP interconnectivity (IPIC) connection. This will allow migration of SNA networks to TCP/IP which provides improved security, simplified administration and performance enhancements resulting from the use of threadsafe mirror programs.
JAVA: A new 64-bit Java runtime environment, coupled with enhancements to the multithread Java Virtual Machine (JVM) server infrastructure delivers better scalability for Java workloads in CICS.
SCALABILITY: Trace tables and both main and auxiliary temporary storage use the 64-bit storage capabilities of the hardware to increase region capacity, and reduce short on storage conditions. The number of LSR pools has been increased from 8 to 255.
PERFORMANCE: The CICS DBCTL interface for IMS is now threadsafe, leading to the possibility of significant performance improvements. The mirror program (DFHMIRS) can now run on an L8 open TCB, and when used in conjunction with the new support for function shipping over IP interconnectivity (IPIC) connections, this provides optimization for large customers whose file-owning regions are CPU constrained.
Details:
Affected sites should ensure that locally supported products are compatible with CICS Transaction Server 4.2. The anticipated timeline for implementation of Transaction Server 4.2 is that a few complexes will be upgraded during 4Q 2012, with the majority of the remaining upgrades being completed by the end of 2013.
Where to find additional information:
A more in depth description of capabilities introduced by Transaction Server 4.1 and 4.2 may be obtained from IBM documents:
CICS TS for z/OS V4.1
What’s New - http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/cicsts/v4r1/topic/com.ibm.cics.ts.whatsnew.doc/pdf/dfhe4_pdf.pdf
Features and Benefits – http://www-01.ibm.com/software/htp/cics/tserver/v41/features.html?S_CMP=wspace
CICS TS for z/OS V4.2
What’s New – http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/cicsts/v4r2/topic/com.ibm.cics.ts.whatsnew.doc/dfhe4_pdf.pdf
Features and Benefits - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/htp/cics/tserver/v42/features.html?S_CMP=wspace
Primary Contact: Eric M Gillespie 901-301-7052
Secondary Contact: Brad Darlow 503-523-6534
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Usercomm - CICS TS R4.2 Upgrade Information