Creating a CICS Application project

A CICS® Application project defines an application bundle. An application bundle is a type of management bundle that describes a CICS application, including the application name, description, and version. The application bundle references the CICS bundles that contain the application resources, dependencies, and any CICS policies relating to the application.

About this task

You can reference one or many CICS bundles in an application bundle. By packaging your application in this way, you can deploy an application and its bundles as a single entity to CICS, making it easier to update and manage the application in CICS.

CICS bundle projects must have an ID and a version number to be included in an application bundle. CICS bundle projects that were created for releases before CICS Transaction Server Version 5 Release 1 did not have an ID and a version number. If you want to include these CICS bundle projects, use the bundle manifest editor in the CICS Explorer® to add an ID and version number to the projects.

A CICS bundle can be installed in CICS regions by only one application or platform. You cannot include the same CICS bundle in other applications that are installed in the same CICS regions in the platform, and you cannot add it to the platform. If your application requires a resource that is in a CICS bundle that has been installed in the target region type in the platform, create a new CICS bundle project. Declare the resource as a dependency for the new CICS bundle, by specifying an import in the manifest file. Then include the new CICS bundle project in your application project. For instructions to declare a resource as a dependency, see Defining bundle dependencies.

The information contained in a CICS Application project is used when managing multiple versions of an application in the CICS Explorer. When you modify the application, increment the version number in the application descriptor.

Procedure

  1. Open the CICS Cloud perspective.
  2. In the Project Explorer view, right-click in the window and click New > Project to open the New Project wizard.
  3. Expand the CICS Resources folder, click CICS Application Project and click Next.
  4. In the Project Name field, enter a name for the project. The Application properties section of the wizard is automatically populated, but you can edit the name, description, and version if required.
  5. Click Next.
  6. Select the CICS bundle projects that you want to include in the application. You can use the application editor to add further CICS bundles after you create the application project.
  7. Click Finish to create the project.

Results

The application project is created. The project contains a META-INF folder that has three XML files:

To edit the application project, expand the META-INF folder for the application and double-click on the application.xml or bundles.xml file. Use the application editor to change the application properties and add or remove CICS bundles from the application project. For a guide to using the application editor, see The application editor.

Note: When you have created and deployed your application project using the CICS Explorer, you must ensure proper management of the project source. The application project cannot be reconstructed from the exported data in zFS, and a failure of your workstation might cause the data to be lost. Ensure that your project is checked into a source code management system. When you use a source code management system that integrates with Eclipse, you can check projects in and out while you are working in the CICS Explorer.

What to do next

Create an Application Binding project to define how the application bundle is deployed in the platform.