Summary of changes from end-of-service releases

This section summarizes the changes that were made to CICS® externals and interfaces in 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4. Use this information, in conjunction with the summaries of changes in later versions, to plan the impact on applications of upgrading from these versions. This information is here to support migration, during periods of extended service, from releases of CICS TS that have been generally withdrawn from service.

For more information about these changes, see the What's New information for 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4.

This document reflects changes only up to the date when a release was withdrawn from service (end-of-service). Occasionally current APARs can apply also to end-of-service releases. For fix lists that summarize all the APARs for each CICS TS release level, see Fixes by version for CICS products.

Overview of release changes

Table 1. Major areas of technology change by end-of-service release
Release New Discontinued
5.4
Applications
  • Asynchronous EXEC CICS API to extend programming language capabilities.
  • API extensions for improved interoperability with batch applications.
  • Enhancements to web services support.
  • Decision Server Insights event format.
Liberty
  • Support for applications written to the Java™ EE 7 Full Platform specification
  • Ability for a CICS program to invoke a Java EE application running in a Liberty JVM server
Management
  • System autoinstall of program definitions for LE.
  • Enhanced management for applications that use IBM® MQ.
  • Extended control of VSAM data set access in support of GDPS® Continuous Availability.
  • Support for the z/OS® Workload Manager Health API.
  • Feature toggles to enable new features selectively.
  • Extensions to statistics and dump capabilities
Policies
  • Support for system rules
  • New asynchronous requests task rule
Security
  • Support for Kerberos mutual authentication.
  • CICS makes a RACF® check by default before generating a PassTicket.
  • 3270 IDS.
  • IBM Health Checker for z/OS checks
  • New transactions for debugging applications in production
Management
  • System events (deprecated).
  • CICSPlex® SM Real-Time Analysis (RTA) (stabilized).

For more information, see Stabilization notices.
5.3
First-class applications
Transaction resources as application entry points, channel delete, and recovery of application availability status
Java
IBM MQ classes for JMS, document constructor, and simplified log management
Liberty
CDI, local JMX connector and REST JMX connector, EJB Lite, managed beans, MongoDB, Monitor, OSGi console, database session persistence, LINK and START commands support invoking Java applications in Liberty, Java EE 7 Web profile, Java batch, Standard mode Liberty, Java EE messaging (JMS) and IBM MQ as a JMS provider
Type 2 cicsts_dataSource and cicsts:jdbc-1.0 are deprecated. You can use Liberty dataSource instead. For access to Db2® through CICS you can now use the default dataSource element for type 2 connectivity rather than the customized cicsts_dataSource.
The wab-1.0 feature was added to cicsts:core-1.0 and cicsts:standard-1.0 as it is used internally by CICS. As a result, all OSGi bundles with a Web-Context root will be treated by Liberty as web applications, and installed as such.
Management
New policy thresholds, transaction tracking for CICS-MQ bridge, DFHCSDUP COPY and LIST
Performance and scaling
Threadsafe commands, System z9® exploitation, tuning of HTTP connections
Policies
Enhancements to task rules
With APAR PI83667: Support for system rules, policy threshold rules renamed to policy task rules, policy thresholds renamed to policy conditions
Security
AT-TLS, SIGNON TOKEN, REQUEST PASSTICKET, HTTP TRACE inactive by default
Management
PASSWORD attribute on FILE resource, ACTJVMTCBS and MAXJVMTCBS on INQUIRE and SET DISPATCHER commands
Security
SSLV3 support
5.2
First-class applications
Multi-versioning
Liberty
JAX-WS, JDBC type 4, JTA
Multiple editions
CICS Transaction Server, Value Unit Edition, Developer Trial
Policies
Enhancements to task rules
With APAR PI83667: Support for system rules, policy threshold rules renamed to policy task rules, policy thresholds renamed to policy conditions
Security
SAML and Kerberos support, TLS 1.2 enforcement, and NIST-SP800-131a conformance
 
5.1
Automation for application deployment
CICS TS build toolkit, DFHDPLOY utility, CICS TS plug-in for IBM UrbanCode® Deploy
Events
Emission of events to multiple EP adapters
First-class applications and platforms
Container support for DPL bridge
Java
64-bit Java, Java 7.0, Java 7.1, Java 8, and Feature Pack for Mobile Extensions
Liberty
Support for Java servlets and JSPs
Management
2000 MXT, and TD threadsafe
Policies
Support for task rules
With APAR PI83667: Support for system rules, policy threshold rules renamed to policy task rules, policy thresholds renamed to policy conditions
Integration
DCE support
Java
EJB and CORBA support, JVM pool support, CCI Connector for CICS
Management
Message edit utility, DFHMEU
4.2
Connectivity
Axis2 web services, web services offload, and HTTP and IP extensions
Events
System events, assured events, and lifecycle management
Java
Java 7, multi-threaded server, and OSGi packaging and management
Management
Transaction tracking, workload management, and password phrases
Scaling
Threadsafe enhancements, optimized threadsafe, and 64-bit exploitation
Events
CICS Events for WebSphere® Business Events SupportPac CB11
4.1
Application support
Application bundles, application components, Java 6
Integration
Events, Atom feeds, web services standards, integration support for IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository, transaction routing over IPIC, IPV6, and identity propagation
Management
CICS Explorer®, RESTful API, improved WUI browser, optimized workload management, IBM MQ group attach, governance and SPI for resources, CICS monitoring improvements, and Discovery Library Adapter for CICS
Performance and scaling
XML system service parsing, JVM server runtime environment, and wild-branch diagnostic improvements
Java
IBM SDK for z/OS JTE V1.4.2 and V1.5.0
Management
DFHCSDUP MIGRATE command, CICSPlex SM WLMLOADCOUNT and WLMLOADTHRESH EYUPARMS
3.2
CICS application connectivity and reuse
WSDL 2.0, MTOM/XOP, WSDL 1.1 and SOAP 1.2, improved data mapping for web services, customized pipelines, Web Services Trust Language, IP connectivity, enhanced WEB support capabilities, security enhancements for web support, and optimized data conversion
CICS service management
Dynamic program library, MVS™ WLM additional statistics, PLT-enabled GLUE thread-safe support, storage above 2GB, ESDS extended addressing, increased precision for monitoring, SMF compression, IBM WebSphere MQ V7 support, XCF group limit relief, and JVM enhancements
CICS service improvements
CICSPlex® SM installation integrated into CICS , EYU9XDBT utility, and significant CICS WUI enhancements
  • CICSPlex SM TSO interface
  • Resettable mode in JVMS
  • Earlier release support in DFH$MOLS
  • DFHLSCU utility