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
header.
About this task
The CICS-MainClass header is used to declare the classes that can be called by
a LINK, START or RUN command, or a transaction initial program. 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 Plug-in 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: packagename.classname where:
-
packagename
- Is the fully qualified Java™ package name.
-
classname
- Is the name of the class used in the application. If more than one class is used, repeat the
packagename.classname
element, separated by a comma.
You can use aliases in the CICS-MainClass header; for
example, the declaration CICS-MainClass: examples.hello.HelloCICSWorld;
alias=greeting assigns the alias greeting to the
CICS-MainClass
examples.hello.HelloCICSWorld. When you define the program to CICS, you use the alias name, greeting,
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 example shows a manifest file with a
CICS-MainClass header for the
classes
HelloCICSWorld and
HelloWorld.
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2
Bundle-Name: Hello Plug-in
Bundle-SymbolicName: com.ibm.cics.server.examples.hello
Bundle-Version 1.0.0
Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment: JavaSE-1.7
Import-Package: com.ibm.cics.core.bundle,
com.ibm.cics.core.model.builders,
com.ibm.cics.server;version="[1.300.0,2.0.0)"
CICS-MainClass: examples.hello.HelloCICSWorld,
examples.hello.HelloWorld
-
When you have added all the class declarations, select File > Save 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.