 | Level: Intermediate Robin Fernandes (robin_fernandes@uk.ibm.com), Software Developer, IBM
Jonathan Lawrence (jlawrence@uk.ibm.com), Software Developer, IBM
21 Apr 2009 CICS® Transaction Server® (TS) is a powerful transaction manager designed for
rapid, high-volume processing. SupportPac CA1S uses technology from IBM
WebSphere® sMash to enhance CICS TS with PHP scripting capabilities and
Representational state transfer (REST)-related features. This tutorial shows how you can use PHP to quickly and easily
work with CICS programs and expose them on the Web. If you are a PHP developer,
find out how you can use your skills to interact with enterprise assets in CICS;
if you are a CICS developer, see how PHP provides a simple and agile way to
manipulate your existing resources.
Before you start
This tutorial shows how you can use CICS SupportPac CA1S to quickly expose
CICS COMMAREA programs on the Web with PHP—a simple and
powerful language that is ideally suited to rapid Web development. You will
create a Web service that uses REST and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), ensuring that it can easily
be consumed by a variety of clients, such as Asynchronous JavaScript and
XML (Ajax) front ends, other Web
services, and mash-ups.
The example CICS COMMAREA program provided with this tutorial (see
Download) is a simple
library application written in COBOL. It holds a list of books in a VSAM
file to which entries can be added or removed, and allows books to be
marked as borrowed or returned.
In this tutorial you will:
- Set up the library program on your CICS system.
- Learn how to invoke CICS COMMAREA programs from PHP.
- Learn about the features in CA1S that simplify the creation of RESTful
Web services.
- Expose the library program as a RESTful Web service
Prerequisites
To get
the most out of this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of the
PHP language and some familiarity with CICS administration or CICS program
development. To read up on CICS, visit the CICS TS 3.2 Information Center.
You may also want to read through the introduction section of the CA1S user
guide, which briefly outlines the purpose of CA1S and the principles of
REST. (See Resources for links to these guides and
documentation.)
CICS
environment
To compete the tutorial, you will need a CICS
environment that meets the prerequisites listed on the CA1S download page.
Download and install the CA1S SupportPac
following the instructions in the CA1S user guide. Verify your installation by invoking the
HelloCICS.php script as described in the guide.
Tools
- Any text editor is sufficient to write PHP scripts. You can use an IDE
such as Eclipse PDT.
- You will need a mechanism to transfer PHP scripts from your
workstation to your CICS server, such as an FTP client or the Target
Management plug-in for Eclipse.
- To test your RESTful Web services, you will need a simple REST client
that can issue
GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE HTTP requests, such as the
Poster add-on for Mozilla Firefox.
Downloads for all tools described can be found in Resources.
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