Changes between releases

A key part of upgrading is understanding the impact of changes to CICS® TS between versions or releases of the product. This section summarizes the changes between releases of CICS Transaction Server for z/OS®.

Major areas of technology change, by release of CICS TS for z/OS summarizes the major technologies that were introduced, and the functions that were discontinued, in each release. Subsequent sections detail the changes to specific areas of CICS TS, such as installation, system initialization parameters, or CICS resources. If you are upgrading from an end-of-service release, you can find information about the changes that are relevant to those releases in Summary of changes from end-of-service releases.

For more information about these changes, see the CICS TS for z/OS What's New section for each release: 5.5, 5.6, and This release.

Major areas of technology change, by release of CICS TS for z/OS

View new capabilities in major areas of technology change, by release of CICS TS. Version tags preceding list headings below indicate the version to which a list of technology change summaries applies.

CICS Transaction Server for z/OS, Version 6 Release 1
6.1 Enhanced developer productivity and experience
  • Support for Java™ 11, Jakarta Enterprise Edition 9.1, and Eclipse MicroProfile 5.
  • Java annotation now available to define methods to link to OSGi Java applications.
  • Bundle deployment, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and advanced IBM® CICS Explorer® functions supported in single CICS regions.
  • New support for Node.js version 16.
  • Maintain CICS resource configuration with application source by using the CICS resource builder.
6.1 Improved security and compliance management
  • Continuous enhancements to CICS support for Transportation Layer Security (TLS), including new support for TLS 1.3, additional TLS monitoring and statistics, the capability to safely change TLS protocols or ciphers, and simplified diagnosis of TLS security problems.
  • New CICS health checks for IBM Health Checker for z/OS, and customization of CICS health checks.
  • New protection to guard against executing code in data-only memory.
  • Addition of MFA authentication sign-on from CICS Explorer to a single CICS region.
  • Removal of the need of security definitions for category 1 transactions.
  • Support for Application Transparent Transport Layer Security (AT-TLS) monitoring and statistics.
  • Simplified diagnosis of sysplex-wide CICS security problems.
  • New SMF 1154 type 80 record to simplify collection of compliance data for auditors.
6.1 Reduced cost of management
  • Tagging of CICS regions to identify usage.
  • Resource definition overrides functionality.
  • Continuous enhancements to CICS policies, including introduction of new system rule types such as compound condition system rules and transaction dump threshold system rules, new ALL option for selected task rules, and enhanced support for policy statistics.
  • Improved temporary storage expiry processing.
  • Extended short on storage notification.
  • Limit on concurrent TLS handshakes.
  • Enhancements in support of Db2®.
  • Increased capacity of shared data tables.
  • Enhanced CICS event processing support.
  • Advanced CICS Explorer functions in single CICS regions.
  • Enhanced performance monitoring, API, SPI, and diagnostics.
  • Improved recovery for Logger failures.
  • CICS installation using z/OSMF Software Management.
  • Ability to use an alternate IBM WebSphere® Application Server Liberty installation location.
6.1 Discontinued
  • CICS Java: The previously deprecated JCICS methods link(com.ibm.record.IByteBuffer) and link(com.ibm.record.IByteBuffer, com.ibm.record.IByteBuffer) have been removed from the class com.ibm.cics.server.Program.
  • Security: TLS 1.0
  • The debugging tools sockets interface: As of Version 14.2, IBM z/OS Debugger supports only the TCP/IP Socket Interface for CICS; therefore, the debugging tools sockets interface provided by CICS TS is no longer used and thus stabilized.

For more information, see Stabilization notices.

CICS Transaction Server for z/OS, Version 5 Release 6
5.6 Developer experience
  • New support for Pivotal Spring Boot
  • New support for Jakarta EE 8
  • Enhanced CICS Java API
  • New Maven Central libraries for CICS Java application development
  • New plug-ins for Maven and Gradle to automate building CICS bundles
  • New deployment API to simplify CICS bundle deployment during development
  • New support for Node.js versions 12 and 14
5.6 Security
  • Enhanced support for CICS TS as an HTTP client when using TLS
  • Enhanced VERIFY TOKEN command to process JSON Web Tokens
  • New CICS monitoring for security domain
5.6 Resilience
  • Improved reporting and action for z/OS short-on-storage conditions
  • Improved usage of BAS data space storage for large CICSPlex® environments
  • Improved management of CICSPlex System Manager data space usage
  • Support for COMMAREAs up to 32 KB on distributed program links
5.6 Management
  • New and enhanced system programming interfaces to assist with JVM server administration
  • New Policy system rule types
  • New z/OS workload management health policy action
  • New support for IBM z/OS Workload Interaction Correlator
5.6 Discontinued
  • The CICS TS utility DFHMSCAN, which scanned a load module library to identify programs that used CICS macros, is removed from this release of CICS TS and later.
  • Support for Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 2.0 is stabilized and will be removed in a future release of CICS TS.
  • Support for the JVMSERVER-based configuration option for the Web Services (WS) data transformation service is stabilized and will be removed in a future release of CICS TS. The JAVA_PIPELINE=YES JVMSERVER profile option should be avoided.
  • Support for WS-Security infrastructure is stabilized.
  • Support for CICS Service Flow Runtime for CICS TS is stabilized and will be removed in a future release of CICS TS.
  • CICS Java: The CICS JVM debug plug-in mechanism has been removed.

For more information, see Stabilization notices.

CICS Transaction Server for z/OS, Version 5 Release 5
5.5 Management
  • Enhancements to CICS Explorer to provide more capabilities, and simplify and improve the user experience.
  • System management advancements to improve control and ownership.
  • Support for inclusion of common configuration in JVM servers.
5.5 Security
  • Enhanced security and resiliency of applications across all supported languages.
5.5 Language support features
  • A new GraphQL API for querying system configuration and inter-resource relationships.
  • Greater API and SPI control with the use of commands and keywords.
  • Support for JavaScript Node.js applications.
  • Support for multiple IBM WebSphere Liberty servers in the same CICS region connecting to a Liberty angel process.
  • New option to wait for Liberty angel process to be ready.
  • CICS bundle status reflects Liberty application status.
5.5 Discontinued
  • The CICS TS utility DFHMSCAN, which scans a load module library to identify programs that use CICS macros, is stabilized and will be removed in a future release of CICS TS.

For more information, see Stabilization notices.

Summary of changes between CICS TS releases by functional area

View changes to externals between releases of CICS TS, by functional area: