CICS® supports the production of events from
new and existing applications for emission to a variety of event consumers.
CICS event processing provides the following benefits:
- CICS event processing enhances business flexibility by providing
a risk-free methodology for enhancing business applications. Events
are defined and controlled outside the CICS application logic, providing
unobtrusive extensions to the business application.
- CICS provides support for simple atomic events. However, these
events can be consumed by a complex event processing engine in which
they can be combined with events from other sources in addition to
CICS.
- CICS event processing focuses on events of significance to the
business, providing enhanced business flexibility and governance to
business applications, rather than additional systems management tooling
through events.
- CICS event processing can emit events at a number of clearly defined
points, known as capture points. A capture point is an opportunity
for an event to be emitted. Capture points are provided before and
after selected EXEC CICS API calls and at program start. All significant
points in a CICS application can emit an event.
CICS event processing workflow
CICS event
processing supports a flow of work between four classes of user.
- The business management user
- Understands the needs of the business, but does not necessarily
know about the programs and computer systems that support that business.
This kind of user uses a new CICS tool to express business needs in
high-level terms. For example, an online camera retail business need
might be: "I need marketing to be notified of every order for a
telescope that exceeds £2000." This need might exist so that the
customer can be targeted with offers for high-specification digital
cameras.
- The application analyst or programmer
- Understands, or can investigate, how an existing application was
designed. He or she can identify which part of an application needs
to be extended to meet the needs of the business manager. In the example
above, the application analyst or programmer must know which part
of a program detects orders for telescopes, where to find the value
of any such order, and where to find any other data that might be
useful in satisfying the business need.
- The CICS system programmer
- Understands how programs interact with CICS, and can help the
application analyst or programmer to deploy the new event processing
resources. The system programmer can enable the EP adapters to work;
for example, defining a queue to WebSphere MQ for use with the WMQ
Queue EP adapter. The system programmer can also monitor and optimize
the performance of the system and its applications and can debug and
diagnose problems related to the application and its events.
In your organization, some or all of these classes
of user might be combined in one person. The tool used by all the
users is the CICS event binding editor, which
is part of the CICS Explorer™.
It is designed to allow the different classes of user to work as a
team to implement event processing.