Release notes for CICS Explorer 1.0.0.7

Copyright statement

(C) Copyright IBM® Corporation 2008, 2010. All rights reserved. For legal information, see http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

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What's new in this release?

Version 1.0.0.7 adds further enhancements to the CICS Explorer™:
  • A new Preferences Credentials page has been added for recording user IDs and passwords.
  • You can now configure the CICS Explorer to use a proxy server when connecting to the internet.
  • Ability to disable a JVM server using the options PHASEOUT, PURGE, FORCEPURGE, or KILL.
  • Changes to the Preferences Connections view to use credentials instead of user ID and password.
  • One new Operations view and two new Administration views are added.
  • Support for Microsoft® Windows® 7 32 bit.

The What's New topic in the CICS Explorer help documentation describes the new and changed items in more detail. To display the topic, click Help > Help Contents > What's new in version 1.0.0.7.

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System requirements and prerequisites

The following minimum hardware levels are required to run the CICS Explorer:
  • CPU - Intel® Pentium® 4 or equivalent.
  • RAM - 768 MB in addition to the operating system requirements.
  • Hard disk - 500 MB available space.
The following levels of operating system software are required to install the CICS Explorer:
  • Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit
  • Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit
  • Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 32-bit
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 32-bit
  • Red Hat Linux® V5 32-bit
The following prerequisite PTFs must be installed on the following versions of CICS®:
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS® Version 4 release 1
  • CICS TS V4 APAR PK90112 is required for all new functions and views that interact with the CICS CSD file.
  • CICS TS V4 APAR PK94205 is required to use the HTTP EP adapter functions.
  • CICS TS V4 APAR PM08661 is required to use the new JVM server Disable actions: PHASEOUT, PURGE, FORCEPURGE, and KILL.
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 3 release 2
  • PTF UK38402
  • PTF UK27327
  • PTF UK43915
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 3 release 1:
  • PTF UK27353
  • PTF UK43910
If you are installing the CICS Explorer SDK, the following versions of software are required:
  • Java™ Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.6 or higher.
  • Eclipse platform version 3.4.2 with the Eclipse RSE FTP v.3.0.3 plug-ins.

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Updating an existing version of CICS Explorer

If you already have the CICS Explorer installed on your workstation you can use the Software Updates function to update the code to the latest level, without having to re-install the product. Instructions are in the task Checking for and installing software updates in the CICS Explorer help documentation. To access the task from the main CICS Explorer menu:

Help > Help Contents > CICS Explorer User Guide > Tasks > Updating and installing software > Checking for and installing software updates

Note: When the CICS Explorer update is complete you must follow the same procedure to update any CICS tools plug-ins that are installed in the CICS Explorer. If you do not, the tools might not work with the latest version of CICS Explorer.

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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
cicsts_explorer_win32_v1007.zip
For the Linux operating system
cicsts_explorer_linux_v1007.tar.gz
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. The filename for the CICS Explorer SDK is:
  • cicsts_explorer_sdk_v1007.zip
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 the CICS Explorer

To launch the CICS Explorer, locate and 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: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 1.0.0.7:
  • You can not install remote resources using CICS Explorer version 1.0.0.7.
  • You can set your help search scope to search the CICS TS 4.1 information center. Setting the search scope to include previous version of the CICS TS information centers is not supported and might cause errors.
  • The column sorting function is not enabled in CICS Explorer version 1.0.0.7.
  • 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.

  • A problem has been identified when running the CICS Explorer on the Linux platforms Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12. These platforms are NOT supported by the IBM CICS Explorer, however there is a workaround that you can use if you want to use these unsupported platforms.

    The problem relates to issues between the GTK and Mozilla releases and the SWT implementation in Eclipse 3.4.2 on which the CICS Explorer is currently based. The issue you might experience is that buttons in the CICS Explorer might not respond to mouse clicks, but will work from the keyboard.

    The workaround is to launch the cicsexplorer executable from the shell script below:

    #!/bin/bash
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
./cicsexplorer $*

    As previously stated, the Linux platforms Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 are unsupported.

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