BUNDLE resources

A BUNDLE resource defines a CICS® bundle, a unit of deployment for an application. A bundle is a collection of CICS resources, artifacts, references, and a manifest that you can deploy into a CICS region to represent a whole application or a component of an application.

The manifest is a file that describes the contents of the bundle, including what resources to create in the CICS region and the location of the supporting artifacts, what prerequisites are required for the application to run successfully, and any services that the application can offer to other applications.

A bundle is deployed to z/OS® UNIX and comprises a directory structure of artifacts. The BUNDLE resource defines where the bundle is deployed on z/OS UNIX and its status. When you enable a BUNDLE resource, CICS reads the manifest and dynamically creates the application resources that are defined in the manifest for you. Other resources that are defined as prerequisites for the application must be present in the CICS region to successfully enable the BUNDLE resource.

When you use CICS bundles, the lifecycle of the installed resources follows the lifecycle of the bundle; if you make available or unavailable, enable or disable, or discard a CICS bundle, the same action is applied to all resources that were dynamically created by the CICS bundle. For information about the implications of packaging resources in CICS bundles, see Characteristics of bundled resources.

Note: When you have created and deployed your bundle using the CICS Explorer®, you should ensure proper management of the bundle source code. The bundle cannot be reconstructed from the exported data in zFS, and a failure of your workstation would cause the data to be lost. You can use the Export function of CICS Explorer to export the bundle and check it in to a source code management system.