Working with bundles

You can use bundles to deploy applications, events, and Atom feeds to your CICS® systems. CICS bundles are a unit of deployment for CICS resources that you want to manage together in a CICS region. Management bundles group related CICS bundles together for deployment and management in a CICSplex. Management bundles are installed in a CMAS, and the associated CICS bundles are installed in the CICS regions across the targeted CICSplex (or platform). You can create management bundles for an application or a platform.

About this task

To create and work with individual CICS bundles, use the task instructions in this section of the help. To create and work with management bundles for applications or platforms, or to create and work with policies, use the task instructions in the section Working with platforms, applications, and policies.

For some artifacts that you can deploy to a CICS bundle, you follow a dedicated process in the CICS Explorer®, the CICS Explorer SDK, or Rational® Developer for System z®. For other artifacts, you create the resource definition directly in the CICS bundle.

You can dynamically create CICS resources using a CICS bundle for the following artifacts. For more details about each of these artifacts, see Artifacts that can be deployed in bundles.
Application event or system event
For CICS event processing, you can use the CICS Explorer to define and deploy event bindings, capture specifications, and EP adapters in CICS bundles. See the CICS event binding editor help.
Atom feed
To serve an Atom feed from CICS, you can use the CICS Explorer to create and deploy an Atom configuration file in a CICS bundle. See Working with Atom feeds.
Channel-based service
Channel-based services are CICS applications that are described as components and assembled together using the Service Component Architecture (SCA) tooling in Rational Developer for System z. See Creating a channel-based service.
Library
A LIBRARY resource defines a dynamic concatenation of data sets containing program artifacts that make up an application or group of applications. See Adding resources to a CICS bundle project.
OSGi bundle
Java™ applications that are packaged as OSGi bundles can be deployed in CICS bundles to run in a JVM server, using the CICS Explorer Software Development Kit (SDK). See the CICS Java Developer Guide in the SDK help.
Program
A PROGRAM resource represents a single program in a CICS system. See Adding resources to a CICS bundle project.
Transaction
A TRANSACTION resource specifies the functions provided by CICS for a particular invocation of an application. See Adding resources to a CICS bundle project.
URI map
A URIMAP resource matches the URI of an HTTP, Atom feed, or Web service request, and provides information to CICS on how to process the request. See Adding resources to a CICS bundle project.
XML-based service
XML-based services are typically web service provider or requester applications created using Rational Developer for System z, which use XML to interface with other applications and use a binding to transform the data. See Creating an XML-based service.