CICS Explorer

CICS Explorer® is an Eclipse-based system management tool that connects to either a CICS TS for z/OS system, or CICS TS for VSE/ESA system. CICS Explorer provides a way of managing one or more CICS® systems, providing a view of some of the CICSPlex® SM functions in CICS Transaction Server and a platform for the integration of future CICS tools. When connected to a z/OS system, CICS Explorer also provides an intuitive and secure way to view and edit z/OS® data sets and zFS files, submit JCL, and view output and job logs.

Today, you manage CICS regions with a variety of stand-alone graphical and non-graphical user interfaces, and with no common way of performing tasks. The CICS Explorer provides a base set of CICSPlex SM functions to manage CICS regions, and a platform on which future CICS tools that are integrated in the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP), can perform tasks and present the information in a common way.

The CICS Explorer resource editor displays the resource definition attributes in one or more pages in the editor. One page, the Attributes page, displays the attributes in tabular form grouped together in the same way as they appear in CEDA or the CICSPlex SM WUI to facilitate the move to CICS Explorer for experienced CICS users. The other page, or pages, display the attributes logically grouped together, but each attribute has more detail provided to simplify the update process for less-experienced CICS users. Every attribute benefits from field-level verification, where the entry is validated in real time. Errors are identified by the Error icon, which identifies the field in error and the page on which the field appears.

The CICS Explorer z/OS perspective provides an intuitive and secure way to view and edit z/OS datasets and zFS files, submit JCL, and view output and job logs. The default perspective contains three views that provide system z information: The Data Sets view, the Jobs view, and the z/OS Unix Files view. Using these views you can view, edit, and submit JCL datasets and other text files. The Console view provides a history of the actions you have performed, such as submitting a job, or changing and saving a file.

The CICS Explorer contains context and more detailed help for the resource views and help on using the CICS Explorer and the basic Eclipse functions. Detailed help for CICS and CICSPlex SM is found in the CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Information Center.