Release notes for CICS Explorer Version 5.1.1.2

Copyright statement

(C) Copyright IBM® Corporation 2008, 2013. All rights reserved. For legal information, see http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

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What's new in this release?

CICS Explorer® Version 5.1.1.2 is an update for APAR IV47936, which is a service refresh of the z/OS Explorer. The following APARs are included in the z/OS Explorer:
  • APAR IV47935
  • APAR IV46847

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System requirements and prerequisites

The CICS Explorer system requirements are listed on the CICS Explorer system requirements web page.

Note: There are some changes to the way that Platform and Application bundles are processed in CICS Explorer v5.1.1. As a result, you must ensure that you have APAR PM81540 installed on your CICS® system, otherwise the bundle deployment fails.

Similarly, if you are using a Liberty JVM server, then you must ensure that you have APAR PM80214 installed on your CICS system.

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Downloading CICS Explorer

You can now use IBM Installation Manager to install CICS Explorer. For more information about installing CICS Explorer by using Installation Manager, see Installing the CICS Explorer in the CICS TS information center.

To develop 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. For details, see Downloading the CICS Explorer SDK.

To download CICS Explorer, 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:
  1. Click the download link for the relevant operating system.
  2. In the resulting dialog, select Save and save the compressed file to a temporary directory.
  3. When the download is complete, extract the contents of the compressed file to a suitable writable directory. Ensure that the directory you choose does not contain any other files.
    An example directory on Windows is as follows:
    C:\Program Files\Explorer
    An example directory on Linux is as follows:
    ~/Explorer

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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.

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Launching CICS Explorer

To launch 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 to configure a connection. To display the CICS Explorer basic tutorial, use one of the following methods:
  • From the welcome screen, click the Tutorials icon. The icon names are displayed when you hover over them.
  • From the menu bar, click Help > Help Contents > CICS Explorer User Guide > Getting Started > Basic tutorial.

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Known issues and limitations

The following limitations exist in CICS Explorer Version 5.1.1.2:
  • 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 that contains 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, do not select the option to save your password when prompted, because CICS Explorer does not provide a method to change your password after it is set. If the password is not saved, 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, the following error might occur: 
    java.net.SocketException: Connection reset
    You can use one of the following methods to resolve the issue:
    • Use Java 6
    • Add a firewall exception for the Java binary
    • Add the following vm arg to your eclipse.ini file: 
      -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
      .

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