Making unavailable, disabling, and discarding applications

To temporarily remove platform users' access to a version of an application, make the application version unavailable. If you do not plan to give users access to the application version again soon, but you want to keep it installed, disable it. If you no longer require the application version, discard it.

About this task

Use this procedure for temporarily or permanently removing unwanted versions of an application from a platform. When you replace an existing version of an application with a new version, follow the complete procedure in Updating applications. For applications that use only CICS resources that are supported for multi-versioning, you do not have to disable or discard an application version when you install a new version. If the application uses CICS resources that are not supported for multi-versioning, you must disable and discard the application version following the steps described in that procedure before you install a new version.

When you make a version of an application unavailable or disable or discard it, the instances of the CICS bundles that were installed for that application version are also made unavailable, disabled, or discarded in the CICS regions. Other versions of the application, or other applications, that use the same CICS bundles are not affected.

Procedure

Open the CICS Cloud perspective. The Cloud Explorer view shows the current status of the application version.
In the Cloud Explorer view, locate the relevant version of the installed application in either the Platform hierarchy or the Application hierarchy. Right-click the application name and click Make Unavailable, then OK to make the application unavailable. Alternatively, double-click on the application name to open the application in the online application editor, and select the Make Unavailable action on the Overview tab. The application is now no longer available to callers through its application entry points.
To disable the application, right-click the application name in the Cloud Explorer view, and select Disable, then click OK to confirm. Alternatively, double-click on the application name to open the application in the online application editor, and select the Disable option from the Disable button on the Overview tab. CICSPlex® SM disables the CICS bundles for the application in the CICS regions. Refresh the Cloud Explorer view, and check the application status. If a status other than Disabled is shown for the application, see Checking the status of an application for more information and suggested actions.
To discard the application from the Cloud Explorer view, you must disable it first, as described in Step 3. When the application is disabled, right-click the application name in the Cloud Explorer view, and select Discard, then click OK to confirm. Alternatively, to perform the disable and discard operations in a single step, double-click on the application name to open the application in the online application editor, then select the Disable and discard option from the Disable button on the Overview tab. CICSPlex SM discards the CICS bundles for the application version in the CICS regions, and uninstalls the application version from the platform. When you refresh the Cloud Explorer view, instead of the application name, you see the name and version number of the application definition (APPLDEF resource) for the version of the application that you just discarded. If CICSPlex SM fails to disable or discard any of the bundles, see Diagnosing application errors for more information and suggested actions.

Results

The application version is made unavailable, disabled, or discarded, and the instances of CICS bundles that were installed for the application version are made unavailable, disabled, or discarded. Callers can no longer access the application version through its application entry points, which can be PROGRAM or URIMAP resources. The application definition remains in the data repository for the CICSplex.

What to do next

If you no longer require the application version, you can delete the application definition that points to that version of the application. You do not have to delete previous versions of the application definition when you install a new version of the application, or when you discard a platform. To delete an application definition, in the Cloud Explorer view, right-click the application definition and select Delete, then click OK to confirm. You must make unavailable, disable, and discard the relevant version of the application before you can delete an application definition.
If you no longer require the application version, you can delete the exported version of the application project from the platform directory in zFS. Use the z/OS® perspective in the CICS Explorer® to delete the folder containing the relevant version of the application bundle from the platform home directory.
If you no longer require the CICS bundles for the components of the application version, you can delete the exported versions of the CICS bundle projects from the platform home directory. Check first that the versions of the CICS bundles are not being used by any other versions of the application, or by any other applications, or by the platform.