A CICS® Application project defines an application bundle. An application bundle is a type of management bundle that describes a CICS application, including the application name, description, and version. The application bundle references the CICS bundles that contain the application resources, dependencies, and any CICS policies relating to the application.
Ensure that the CICS bundle projects that you want to include in the application are available. CICS bundle projects must have an ID and a version number to be included in an application bundle. CICS bundle projects that were created for releases before CICS Transaction Server Version 5 Release 1 did not have an ID and a version number. If you want to include these CICS bundle projects, use the CICS Bundle Manifest Editor in the CICS Explorer® to add an ID and version number to the projects.
A CICS bundle can be installed in CICS regions by only one application or platform. You cannot include the same CICS bundle in other applications that are installed in the same CICS regions in the platform, and you cannot add it to the platform. If your application requires a resource that is in a CICS bundle that has been installed in the target region type in the platform, create a new CICS bundle project. Declare the resource as a dependency for the new CICS bundle, by specifying an import in the manifest file. Then include the new CICS bundle project in your application project. For instructions to declare a resource as a dependency, see Defining bundle dependencies.
You can reference one or many CICS bundles in an application bundle. By packaging your application in this way, you can deploy an application and its bundles as a single entity to CICS, making it easier to update and manage the application in CICS.
The information contained in a CICS Application project is used when managing multiple versions of an application in the CICS Explorer. If you modify the application, you can increment the version in the application descriptor when you repackage the application.