What's new

CICS® Transaction Gateway for IBM® z/OS® is a high-performing, secure, and scalable connector that uses standards-based interfaces to enable client applications that are deployed in various runtime environments to access CICS servers.

On this page, find out what capabilities CICS Transaction Gateway 10.1 delivers:

64-bit capability for Windows

CICS Transaction Gateway for Windows (both CICS Transaction Gateway for Multiplatforms and CICS Transaction Gateway Desktop Editions) now operates in a 64-bit address space that enables standardization on a 64-bit ecosystem. You can run 64-bit CICS Transaction Gateway applications in either local mode or remote mode topology through IP Interconnectivity (IPIC) and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). All existing product features remain the same and no additional configurations are required. All client applications continue to function as before, with no modifications needed.

IPIC high availability

CICS Transaction Gateway now provides high availability (HA) capability by using the IP Interconnectivity (IPIC) support. The IPIC HA provides a single point of access to a cluster of CICS regions via an IP network, thus making CICS Transaction Gateway resilient to single-node failures due to outages of one or more regions across a cluster.

IPIC HA is available only if you are using CICS Transaction Server 5.2 or later.

See IPIC high availability.

Security

CICS Transaction Gateway provides the following security enhancements:

  • TLS 1.3 support

    CICS Transaction Gateway now supports TLS 1.3, the latest version of the TLS protocol. The selection of protocols and cipher suites can be done with a simplified configuration in the java.security file.

    See SSL enhancements.

  • Password phrase

    CICS Transaction Gateway now supports the use of EBCDIC (IBM037) characters in password phrases that are associated with ECI calls originating from Java client applications. The use of EBCDIC characters helps improve the security of applications on distributed and z/OS environments.

    See EBCDIC (IBM037) characters in password phrase.

  • Client filtering

    CICS Transaction Gateway provides the client filtering mechanism to implement security policies and access control efficiently. This mechanism enables CICS Transaction Gateway to validate requests that originate from authentic clients, and pass these requests to CICS Transaction Server.

    See Client Filtering.

  • SSL support with statistics port

    CICS Transaction Gateway provides statistical data about the status and the activities that are performed by the Gateway daemon, which can now be obtained by using the SSL statistics API protocol. Earlier, this information was available over a TCP connection only. With the new SSL support, you can securely access and monitor the gateway daemon statistics over an encrypted connection.

    For information about configuring the SSL statistics API protocol handler, see SSL statistics API protocol parameters.

Observability

CICS Transaction Gateway enables observability that is based on generated data such as logs and traces. With observability, you get a deep visibility into distributed applications for faster automated problem identification and resolution. The following features aid observability in CICS Transaction Gateway:

  • OpenTelemetry support for CICS TG

    CICS Transaction Gateway (CICS TG) on z/OS and the CICS TG SDK now support OpenTelemetry (OTel) tracing, enabling end-to-end visibility across hybrid environments. With the introduction of the SPAN_POLICY parameter, administrators and developers can control OTel tracing behavior at both the CICS TG Gateway and client application levels (via the CICS TG SDK). This ensures consistent context propagation and span generation, whether tracing originates from distributed systems or z/OS.

    This enhancement significantly improves observability, simplifying troubleshooting and performance optimization in complex, distributed transaction flows.

    OpenTelemetry support is available for ECI calls made from Java, Java EE, Jakarta EE, .NET Framework, and .NET Core client applications connecting to IPIC CICS servers. (APAR PH66340)

    See OpenTelemetry.

  • Transaction monitoring

    The transaction monitoring capability of CICS Transaction Gateway removes the dependency on CH51 SupportPac. The simple request monitoring utility is based on the CICS Transaction Gateway request monitoring exits. This utility generates logs in JSON format, which enables auditing and analysis of performance-related problems.

    See Transaction monitoring.

  • Distributed tracing by using traceparent

    Distributed tracing is a methodology by which monitoring products can trace requests by using traceparent, a W3C specification, enabling precise tracking of transactions from the front-end applications.

    See Distributed tracing using traceparent.

  • JSON logging

    You can now redirect JSON formatted CICS Transaction Gateway logs to various observability tools such as Instana and Splunk to visualize, index, and analyze them easily.

    You can enable CICS Transaction Gateway to generate logs in JSON format by using the jsonlogging parameter.

    See Log CICS TG messages in JSON format.

  • Client IP statistics

    You can now enable client IP statistics in CICS Transaction Gateway. This feature facilitates monitoring basic client activities to obtain statistical data such as the number of allocated connections, number of blocked connections, types of clients connected, worker, idle timeouts, and so on. These statistics are fetched based on the client IP address and are logged in JSON format.

    See Client IP Statistics.

Application development

CICS Transaction Gateway provides the following features for application development:

  • Spring Boot support

    CICS TG now comes with enhanced application development capabilities via Spring Boot. You can easily transition your applications to Spring Boot by using the standard CICS Transaction Gateway SDK and resource adapter. New samples that are provided with CICS Transaction Gateway help you get started with Spring Boot instantly.

    For more information about using samples, see Spring Boot samples.

  • JWT support for Jakarta EE

    CICS Transaction Gateway now provides the ability to design a standard security solution based on JSON Web Token (JWT) using the Jakarta specification. Before this release, this ability was available using the Java EE specification only. For information about using JWT, see ECI calls secured with JSON Web Token (JWT).

    For an example of configuring JWT, see Configuring JSON Web Token (SC15 and SC16)

  • Jakarta EE support

    Jakarta EE offers a community-driven open source model with frequent releases than Java EE. This feature enables Jakarta EE to evolve quickly to address the needs of modern applications.

    For more information, see:

Removal of 32-bit deliverables across all platforms

All 32-bit deliverables have been removed from CICS Transaction Gateway across all platform releases. Going forward, CICS Transaction Gateway 10.1 can be run only in a 64-bit address space.