Installing the CICS Information Center in the CICS Explorer

You can download and install a copy of some, or all, of the CICS® Information Center into your CICS Explorer®. Because the documentation you download is local, you can search and view it easily from within the CICS Explorer.

Before you begin

The CICS Information Center is available as an Eclipse software update site which means that you can install it in the CICS Explorer. However in its entirety it is very large, so you might consider downloading only some of the topics. You can select the topics to download during the software update process.

Procedure

  1. Add the update site for the CICS Information Center to the CICS Explorer:

    For CICS TS version 5.1.

    1. Click Help > Install New Software the menu bar. The Available Software view opens.
    2. Click Add to open the Add Repository dialog.
    3. In the Name field type CICS TS 5.1 Information Center or any other name you want to identify the site. In the Location field type http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/cics/infocenter/5.1. This is the path to the Information center update site. Click OK.

    For CICS TS version 4.2.

    1. Click Help > Install New Software the menu bar. The Available Software view opens.
    2. Click Add to open the Add Repository dialog.
    3. In the Name field type CICS TS 4.2 Information Center or any other name you want to identify the site. In the Location field type http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/cics/infocenter/4.2. This is the path to the Information center update site. Click OK.

    For CICS TS version 4.1.

    1. Click Help > Install New Software on the menu bar. The Available Software view opens.
    2. Click Add to open the Add Repository dialog.
    3. In the Name field type CICS TS 4.1 Information Center or any other name you want to identify the site. In the Location field type http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/cicsts/4.1/. This is the path to the Information center update site. Click OK.

    For CICS TS version 3.2.

    1. Click Help > Install New Software on the menu bar. The Available Software view opens.
    2. Click Add to open the Add Repository dialog.
    3. In the Name field type CICS TS 3.2 Information Center or any other name you want to identify the site. In the Location field type http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/cicsts/3.2/. This is the path to the Information center update site. Click OK.
    Note: You can have only one version of the CICS TS Information Center installed at a time. If you want to change the installed version of the Information center for a different version, you must uninstall the current version first. Select it in the Installed Software page and click Uninstall.
  2. Ensure that the Group items by category check box is not selected. CICS Explorer connects to the update site and displays a list of the documentation that is available for download. This action might take a while depending on your network connection.
    A screen capture of the Software Updates dialog showing all the software available for download at the CICS TS v4.1 Information Center download site. The section CICS TS for z/OS V4.1 primary information is selected.
    Click the check box to select the documentation to download. Most of the CICS TS documentation, including the PDF files, is contained in the file CICS TS Vx.x primary information.
  3. Click Next. In the Install Details view, review the items to install and click Next. The information center has an open license, but you must still agree to the terms of the license agreement, then click Finish. The selected software is downloaded and installed in the CICS Explorer.

Results

When all the software is downloaded successfully and the necessary files have been installed into the product, you are prompted to restart the CICS Explorer. Click Yes when you are asked to exit and restart the Workbench for the changes to take effect. When the CICS Explorer restarts, the CICS Information Center topics are displayed in the Help Contents view, and any search identifies results in the CICS Information Center topics as well as the CICS Explorer help topics.