Configure IPIC connections to CICS with Docker Desktop and basic authentication

Connect to CICS® with basic authentication.

About this task

In this task, you create the cics.xml file. This file uses the environmental variables defined in the docker-compose.yaml file as inputs for the IPIC connection when you start your container at run time.

With this configuration, the z/OS Connect Designer can authenticate with CICS using basic authentication. It is assumed that the target CICS region is configured to expect basic authentication credentials. That is, USERAUTH(VERIFY) is specified on the CICS IPCONN resource.

Tip: This tutorial demonstrates basic authentication. For other security configuration, see Configuring an IPIC connection to CICS.

You provide your user ID and password, then z/OS Connect Designer passes your credentials to CICS for authentication.

1. In your text editor, create a file with the following content.

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
   <server description="IPIC connection to CICS">
       <featureManager>
           <feature>zosconnect:cics-1.0</feature>
       </featureManager>
   
       <zosconnect_cicsIpicConnection id="cicsConn" host="${CICS_HOST}" port="${CICS_PORT}" authDataRef="cicsCredentials"/>
       
       <zosconnect_authData id="cicsCredentials" user="${CICS_USER}" password="${CICS_PASSWORD}"/>
   </server>

2. Save the file as cics.xml in the directory ZCWorkspace/CatalogManagerApi/src/main/liberty/config.
3. Verify that the new files and directories are listed correctly.
   The following screen image shows the resulting project structure:

   /ZCWorkspace
   |-- /certs
   |-- /logs
   |-- /CatalogManagerApi/src/main/liberty/config/cics.xml
   |-- docker-compose.yaml