When you develop a JCICS application, or package an existing
application in a plug-in project, you must update the project manifest
file and include a CICS-MainClass declaration.
About this task
The CICS-MainClass declaration is used to declare the
classes that can be called by other CICS applications from outside
the JVM server. Do not use lazy activation policies for OSGi bundles
that declare a CICS main class. CICS activates the OSGi bundles as
soon as they are started in the OSGi framework. You must add the declaration
manually to the manifest file.
Procedure
- If the manifest file is not already open in the editor,
right-click the project name in the Package Explorer view and click PDE
Tools > Open Manifest. The manifest file
opens in the manifest editor.
- Select the MANIFEST.MF tab. The
content of the file is displayed.
- Add the following declaration to the manifest file: CICS-MainClass: appname.classname where:
- appname
- Is the bundle name as shown in the manifest file.
- classname
- Is the name of the class used in the application. If more than
one class is used, repeat the appname.classname element,
separated by a comma.
Optional: You can use aliases in the CICS-MainClass
declaration; for example, the declaration CICS-MainClass:
Table_application.CreateTable;alias=table1 assigns the
alias table1 to the CICS-MainClass Table_application.CreateTable.
When you define the program to CICS, you use the alias name, table1,
instead of the class name. An alias is useful if you have multiple
versions of the same program, each with the same class name. By using
aliases you can identify the different versions.
The following
screen capture shows an example manifest file for the CICS Hello examples.
The example application contains two classes: HelloCICSWorld and HelloWorld,
and these are declared in the manifest file in the CICS-MainClass
declaration. These classes can be called by applications outside the
JVM server.
- When you have added all the class declarations, press Ctrl
+S to save the manifest file.
Results
You can now add the plug-in project to a CICS bundle and
deploy it to zFS. CICS® bundles
can contain one or more plug-ins and are the unit of deployment for
your application in CICS.