What's new in this release?
CICS Explorer® Version 5.1 adds further enhancements:
- Composite update site provides a simple way to keep up to date
with new versions of CICS Explorer and add new tools and plug ins
to your CICS Explorer environment.
- Ability to perform a system dump.
- Ability to create an application definition.
- Ability to create a platform definition.
- Ability to create a policy definition.
- Ability to add a CICS® bundle
to a platform.
- Ability to remove a CICS bundle
from a platform.
- Ability to define dependencies in a CICS bundle
project.
- Ability to define and edit resources in a CICS bundle project.
- Ability to define static data when defining a event.
- Ability to query the policy rules that have been deployed within
a given scope.
- Ability to define dependencies in a CICS bundle
project.
- System events now support the MESSAGE capture point.
- Application events now support the Write-to-Operator capture point.
- Support for combining EP Adapters into EP Adapter Sets.
- Support in the Event Binding Editor for emitting static data on
an event.
- Ability to rebuild the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for a CICS region.
- CICS Explorer can
connect to CICS servers using
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
- A new perspective has been added: The CICS Cloud perspective which
you can use to view all cloud resources in a CICSplex, in a platform
or application-centric way.
- Seven new Operation views are added: Applications view; Cloud
Explorer view; Data Tables view, EP Adapter Sets view; Physical Data
Sets view, Platforms view, and z/OS® Workload
Management view.
- Two new Definition views are added: Application Definitions view,
and Platform Definitions view.
- New fields have been added to the Task and Completed Tasks views.
- CICS Explorer SDK
support for CICS TS 5.1 JCICS.
- CICS Explorer SDK
support for Java™ 7.
- CICS Explorer SDK
field names in the Task view have been changed to be more meaningful.
- The CICS Explorer SDK
Active Workloads view has been renamed to the Workloads view.
The What's New topics in the CICS Explorer help documentation describes
the new and changed items in more detail. To display the topics, click .
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Downloading the CICS Explorer
If you are
developing a third-party application to run as a plug-in in CICS Explorer, you must
download the CICS Explorer SDK
and install it into an existing Eclipse environment. See the next
section for details.
You must select the CICS Explorer files for your operating
system:
- For the Windows operating
system
- Download the .zip file.
- For the Linux operating
system
- Download the .tar.gz file.
To download the CICS Explorer compressed file for Windows or Linux:
- Click the download link for the relevant operating system.
- In the dialog box that appears, select "Save" and save it in a
temporary directory.
- When the download is complete, extract the contents of the compressed
file to any writable directory of your choice, for example;
- C:\Program Files\Explorer on Windows
- ~/Explorer on Linux.
Ensure that the directory you choose does not contain any other
files.
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Downloading the CICS Explorer SDK
The CICS Explorer SDK must
be installed into an existing Eclipse environment.
To download
the CICS Explorer SDK
compressed file:
- Click the CICS Explorer SDK
download link.
- Save the .zip file in a temporary directory
on your workspace. for example, c:\temp on Windows, or your home directory on Linux. Do NOT unzip the file.
- Install the CICS Explorer SDK
into your Eclipse environment.
Note: If you get the message: Cannot complete the
install because one or more required items could not be found,
and you are installing the plug-in with Eclipse Version 3.5 or Version
3.6, select the Contact all update sites during install
to find required software checkbox in the Install
new software > Install dialog and retry the operation.
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Launching the CICS Explorer
To launch the CICS Explorer, double-click
the file cicsexplorer.exe (cicsexplorer on Linux), located in a subdirectory called CICS_Explorer.
The first time CICS Explorer starts,
the welcome screen is displayed.
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Getting started
The CICS Explorer help documentation
is integrated with the product and includes a basic tutorial and instructions
on configuring a connection. To display the CICS Explorer basic tutorial perform
one of the following actions:
- From the welcome screen, click the Tutorials icon.
The icon names are displayed when you hover over them.
- From the main menu bar, click:
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Known issues and limitations
The
following limitations exist in CICS
Explorer Version 5.1:
Important: It is a limitation of Eclipse that before
you can revert to a previous version of CICS Explorer you must have access
to an update site containing the source code for the previous level.
You can download the update site source code from the IBM Fix central Web site located at
http://www.ibm.com/support/fixcentral.
- The Eclipse software update function does not fully support Eclipse
Update-Sites secured with HTTP Basic Authentication. If you are connecting
to an Eclipse update site that prompts for a username and password,
you should not select the option to save your password when prompted,
because CICS Explorer does
not provide a method for changing your password once set. If the password
is not saved, then it must be entered each time the CICS Explorer connects to the update
site. If a password is saved and subsequently needs changing, manual
editing of configuration files would be required.
- If you are running CICS
Explorer SDK on Windows 7,
with Java 7, and the windows
firewall enabled, then you may experience the error java.net.SocketException:
Connection reset. You can use one of the following workarounds:
- If you are running CICS
Explorer SDK on Eclipse 3.6.2 with Java 7, you may see an error
message Comparison method violates its general contract and
Eclipse fails to start. You can use one of the following workarounds:
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