Changes between releases

A key part of upgrading is understanding the impact of changes to CICS TS between versions or releases of the product. This section summarizes the changes between releases of CICS® Transaction Server for z/OS® .

Table 1 summarizes the major technologies that were introduced, and the functions that were discontinued in each release. Subsequent sections detail the changes by release to areas of CICS TS. For more information about these changes, see the CICS TS for z/OS What's New section for each release: 3.2 , 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, and This release.

Table 1. Major areas of technology change, by release of CICS TS for z/OS
Release New Discontinued
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
4.1
Integration
Events, Atom feeds, web wervices standards, integration support for IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository, transaction routing over IPIC, IPV6, and identity propagation
Performance and scaling
XML system service parsing, JVM server runtime environment, and wild-branch diagnostic improvements
Application support
Application bundles, application components, Java™ 6
Enterprise management
CICS Explorer® , RESTful API, improved WUI browser, optimized workload management, IBMWebSphere® MQ group attach, governance and SPI for resources, CICS monitoring improvements, and Discovery Library Adapter for CICS
  • IBM® SDK for z/OS JTE V1.4.2 and V1.5.0
  • DFHCSDUP MIGRATE command
  • CICSPlex SM WLMLOADCOUNT and WLMLOADTHRESH EYUPARMS
4.2
Events
System events, assured events, and lifecycle management
Java
Java 7, multi-threaded server, and OSGi packaging and management
Scalability
Threadsafe enhancements, optimized threadsafe, and 64-bit exploitation
Connectivity
Axis2 web services, web services offload, and HTTP and IP extensions
Management
Transaction tracking, workload management, and password phrases
  • CICS Events for WebSphere Business Events SupportPac CB11
5.1
First-class application, platforms and policies
With APAR PI83667: Support for system rules. Policy threshold rules renamed to policy task rules. Policy thresholds renamed to policy conditions.
Events
Multiple emission
Liberty Profile
Support for Java servlets and JSPs, and Feature Pack for Mobile
IBM WebSphere MQ
Container support for DPL bridge
Foundation
2000 MXT, and TD threadsafe
Java
64-bit Java
  • EJB and CORBA support
  • JVM pool support
  • CCI Connector for CICS
  • DCE support
  • Message edit utility, DFHMEU
5.2
Multiple editions
CICS Transaction Server, Value Unit Edition, Developer Trial
First-class applications
Multi-versioning
Policies
Enhancements to thresholds
With APAR PI83667: Support for system rules. Policy threshold rules renamed to policy task rules. Policy thresholds renamed to policy conditions.
Liberty Profile
JAX-WS, JDBC type 4, JTA
Security
SAML and Kerberos support, TLS 1.2 enforcement, and NIST-SP800-131a conformance
Java
Java 7.0 and Java 7.1 support
  
5.3
First-class applications
Transaction resources as application entry points, channel delete, and recovery of application availability status
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
Note: 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.
Security
AT-TLS, SIGNON TOKEN, REQUEST PASSTICKET, HTTP TRACE inactive by default
Java
IBM MQ classes for JMS, document constructor, and simplified log management
Performance and scaling
Threadsafe commands, System z9 exploitation, tuning of HTTP connections
Policies
Enhancements to policy thresholds
With APAR PI83667: Support for system rules. Policy threshold rules renamed to policy task rules. Policy thresholds renamed to policy conditions.
Management
New policy thresholds, transaction tracking for CICS-MQ bridge, DFHCSDUP COPY and LIST
Automation for application deployment
The CICS TS build toolkit, DFHDPLOY utility, integration with IBM UrbanCode™ Deploy
  • PASSWORD attribute on FILE
  • ACTJVMTCBS and MAXJVMTCBS on INQUIRE and SET DISPATCHER
  • BEAN, CORBASERVER, JVMPOOL, JVMPROFILE, and REQUESTMODEL on PERFORM STATISTICS
  • SSLV3 support removed