Follow the instructions or video tutorials to download and get your CICS Explorer® ready to work.
Prerequisites:To get the full benefit of CICS Explorer, an in-service release of CICS® Transaction Server for z/OS® is required. Some
features are available only on higher releases of CICS TS,
or they require server enablement. See What's new for details. See
also the CICS Explorer 5.5 Detailed
System Requirements report.
Downloading and starting CICS
Explorer
You can install CICS Explorer in many ways. The quickest
way is to download a compressed file from Install Eclipse Tools with the
Eclipse (p2) method.
Go to Install Eclipse Tools and select IBM CICS Explorer > Aqua 3.x > Eclipse p2 > Starting from fresh as you move through the wizard.
Download the version of IBM CICS Explorer that suits your
operating system. The compressed file contains an IBM Explorer for z/OS platform on which CICS Explorer is built, so you don't need to separately download
IBM Explorer for z/OS.
After you extract the compressed file, double-click the zosexplorer.exe
file to start CICS Explorer.
CICS Explorer displays a
Welcome screen when it starts for the first time. Click the
Workbench icon in the upper-right corner to go to the workbench.
The workbench shows a collection of windows that form a certain layout. The windows are called
views and the overall layout is a perspective in CICS Explorer. They display information related to your CICS regions or CICSplexes.
You must connect CICS Explorer to a CICS region or CICSplex to manage your resources.
The Host Connections view in the bottom lists your CICS Explorer connections. If the view is not displayed
in the perspective, click Window > Manage Connections on the main menu.
You are recommended to connect to CICS regions or CICSplexes through the CICS management
client interface (CMCI) connection, which provides more powerful capabilities against CICS resources. To add a CMCI connection, select the
CMCI category from the connection list and click Add.
In the pop-up window, specify the information, such as the host name and port number, for your
connection and click Save and Connect.
In the Signon window, specify your credentials to connect.
The CICS Explorer workbench is a single window
that consists of views arranged in a certain way to form a layout known as a perspective, as well
as other visual components, as the following screen capture shows.
Views
A view is a display of specific CICS data that relates to
the current context or scope. Multiple views can be stacked
together into a tab group shown as a pane. For example, the selected views in Fig 1. Example CICS SM
perspective are:
The CICSplex Explorer view, which shows the CICSplex and CICS regions to which CICS Explorer is connected.
The Programs view, which shows information about currently installed programs in the connected CICS region or CICSplex.
The Properties view, which shows details about the properties of the
selected resource.
The Help view, which dynamically shows help information for CICS Explorer users based on the context.
Figure 1. Example CICS SM perspective
Because CICS Explorer is built on top of z/OS Explorer, it provides CICS-specific views, including operation and definition views, besides views that are provided by z/OS Explorer, such as z/OS Jobs and
Host Connections views.
Operation views and definition views are both resource views. Operation views display the CICS resources that support day-to-day operation and management
of the enterprise, and definition views display details of the CICS and CICSPlex® SM resource definitions. You can
customize how the data is shown in a resource view by adding filters, sorting the data, or adjusting
the data columns. In the operation view, you can perform actions against a resource, for example,
enabling or disabling a resource. In the definition view, you can create or update resource
definitions by using the CICS Explorer resource
editor.
A perspective is a layout of one or more views in the workbench. CICS Explorer has a set of default perspectives, including some that provide CICS functions (CICS Cloud,
CICS SM, and SM Administration) and others
(Resource, z/OS, and Remote System
Explorer) that derive from z/OS Explorer,
based on which CICS Explorer is built. Different perspectives
offer different sets of views.
Areas 1 - 4 in Fig 1. Example CICS SM perspective form the CICS SM perspective, which is one of the default
perspectives provided by CICS Explorer.
To switch to a different perspective, click the Open
Perspective icon on the workbench toolbar and select one perspective.
You can customize the perspective to suit your business
needs; for example, you can open and close views, or move and resize views by dragging the view tabs
or their borders. Changes to the perspective remain after you reopen CICS Explorer.
The information bar in the bottom of the workbench provides additional information. The status
bar (Area 5) displays status messages, error messages, or short descriptions of attributes,
depending on the current action. The connection status bar (Area 6) displays the status and
the name of the system connection. To choose another connection, click the arrow icon to the left of
the connection name.
Viewing and changing resources
Customize resource views to examine resources
To view resources in the connected region or CICSplex, select a CICS region or a CICSplex in the CICSplex Explorer view. Each resource view dynamically shows information about
a certain type of resource in the selected systems. For example, in the screen capture, the
Programs view in Area 2 shows information about programs in the connected
IYCWEKKS region.
As with perspectives, you can customize the resource view to examine a specific set of resources
to suit your business needs. For example, you can change the view layout by moving or resizing its
columns; you can also filter or sort the data in a view. Customization of a view remains after you
refresh or reopen a view.
To filter resource data quickly, right-click a resource, and then select Add Quick
Filter to specify a filter for that resource attribute. You cannot filter resources by
the region attribute.
To sort data by a resource attribute, click the attribute column header, for example,
Name. Click the column header again to change the sorting order. To clear sorting, click the
View Menu icon on the toolbar of the view, and then click Clear Sort.
To perform more actions against a resource, you can right-click it to display a menu of available
actions for the selected resource.
You can edit existing resource definitions by using the resource editor, which displays the
resource definition attributes in one or more pages. You can open the resource editor in a resource
definition view or a project view, by double-clicking the resource or right-clicking it and then
selecting Open.
If you open a resource in a running CICS region, the changes you can make are limited. However, if you open a resource definition,
you can change all editable attributes, just as you can with CEDA.