Developer: My Application Uses CICS

CICS is an application server for IBM Z that supports mixed languages. CICS provides features for scalability, reliability, and availability to support the operation of mission critical applications that process a high volume of transactions or requests. It supports Java, Java EE, COBOL and PL/I among other programming languages.

Before you start, you can check the following overview of migrating CICS applications to a PC.

The following steps provide guidance on how to create mainframe projects in Enterprise Developer for your COBOL and PL/I applications that use CICS, and how to debug and test them. The assumption is that you will be adding your existing application sources to a Visual Studio project.

  1. Configure Visual Studio for CICS development.

    The default settings in Enterprise Developer are settings aimed at Mainframe Subsystem Application development. You can check and fine-tune them as follows:

    • Directives scanning of files added to the project - find more info about the COBOL and PL/I file scanning preferences.
    • Editor productivity and colorization - check the preferences for COBOL and for PL/I.
  2. Create a Mainframe Subsystem Application project for COBOL or for Create a PL/I project.
  3. Add your source files - see how for COBOL or for PL/I projects.
  4. Configure the project's properties:

    For example, for COBOL:

    • Application page - specify what the output type should be and any environment variables
    • SQL page - specify an ESQL preprocessor and directives
    • Dependencies - specify the paths to your copybooks
    • BMS - specify settings for how to build your BMS files
    • COBOL - specify a dialect with Enterprise COBOL for z/OS set by default; encoding; EXEC CICS options, and other. See also Enable the CICS ECM preprocessor.
    • Debug - specify options for debugging EXEC CICS.

    For PL/I projects, click here.

  5. Edit your source files - see some tips for COBOL, PL/I, and BMS files.
  6. Build your application.
  7. Debug your application - Enterprise Developer comes with a testing environment for applications that run in Enterprise Server.

Further, to get familiar with the process of developing CICS applications in Enterprise Developer, Micro Focus recommends that you go through the following tutorials:

Parent topic: Where do I start: Developing Mainframe Applications in Enterprise Developer