How to improve performance and increase mainframe availability by improving CICS configuration
CICS is probably the most successful software of all time.
It is the pillar of enterprise computing worldwide. Millions of users unknowingly enable CICS every day, and if it were to disappear, the world economy would come to a standstill.
It is crucial for the mainframe because it enables the efficient and reliable execution of high-performance enterprise applications, managing thousands of simultaneous transactions with high availability and security.
In this article we explain what CICS is, what its main features are, how it works and what its benefits are.
We also identify use cases and discuss some strategies to consider for improving mainframe performance and increasing availability by improving CICS configuration.
What is CICS?
Customer Information Control System Transaction Server (CICS®) is the transaction processing software for mainframe environments developed by IBM for z/OS.
This is a powerful application server, used for processing large volumes of transactions.
He CICS event processing provides a non-invasive methodology to extend business applications. Events are defined and handled independently of business logic, extending or monitoring a business application without any modification.
CICS provides a Robust and scalable platform that facilitates interaction between applications and databases, which optimizes system performance and ensures that business operations are carried out without interruptions. An essential feature for Maintain business continuity and customer satisfaction.
It is widely used in sectors such as insurance, banking, finance, retail and government, where reliability and high-performance processing of online transactions are critical.
Nowadays, in the world of social media - which many entrepreneurs use to publish their articles and market their products or services - or in the use of credit cards, Almost all transactions are processed using CICS.
In this regard, it is worth noting that CICS transactions are identified by a four-character transaction ID. For example, the transaction ID “DS01” could represent a transaction showing the balance of a customer’s account, or a banking transaction involving, for example, withdrawing money from an ATM.
CICS transactions are special because of their speed, reliability, scalability and security.
What is CICS Cobol?
Refers to the use of the Cobol programming language in a CICS environment.
When programming Cobol applications that will run under CICS, developers can take advantage of the transaction management and database access capabilities offered by CICS.
This involves writing Cobol programs with CICS-specific commands to perform tasks such as reading and updating records in databases, managing communications between terminals, and handling transaction concurrency.
This helps optimize performance and data integrity in critical business systems.
What are the main features of CICS?
The most important features of the Customer Information Control System Transaction Server are as follows:
1. Transaction management
It is highly efficient in handling large volumes of online transactions, which Accelerates response times and increases consistency in data processing. Additionally, it enables the coordination and management of distributed transactions that may involve multiple systems and resources.
2. Scalability and performance
CICS is designed to support mission-critical environments with high availability and disaster recovery requirements. In parallel, it has the ability to handle a large number of simultaneous transactions, making it Suitable for organizations with large volumes of data and users.
3. Security and control
In terms of authentication, CICS implements robust security mechanisms to ensure that only authorized users can access and execute transactions. Additionally, it provides extensive logging and auditing capabilities for monitoring and controlling transactional activities.
5. Compatibility and flexibility
It is compatible with various programming languages like Cobol, PL/I, Java, and C, allowing organizations to use the language that best suits their needs.
As for interoperability, you can interact with a variety of systems and services, including databases, messaging systems, and web services.
6. Application development and management
IBM provides tools such as CICS Explorer to facilitate the development, administration, and monitoring of these applications.
It also supports legacy application modernization, enabling integration with modern technologies such as RESTful APIs, web services, and microservices architectures.
7. Support for integration and middleware
Facilitates integration with other enterprise systems and middleware, such as IBM MQ, to ensure uninterrupted flow of data and processes.
How does CICS work?
As explained from IBMCICS event processing support enables users to identify and specify significant business events to be emitted by applications.
The CICS Event Binding Editor is used to create event specifications that are installed on the system.
At run time, CICS uses event specifications to detect and capture events.
Each event specification describes how the data in the event payload is obtained from the data available when an event occurs in the application.
These event specifications are grouped into event bindings. The event binding is the unit for deploying, enabling, and disabling the CICS events it contains.
An application analyst deploys event bindings to the system and enables event emissions. For each event binding, the CICS event processing (PS) adapter configuration is specified.
The adapter transforms the event data into a suitable output format and then uses a transport mechanism to direct the events so that they are available to potential event clients.
For IBM Business Monitor and CICS integration, the output is in CBS (Common Base Events) format and the transport mechanism is WebSphere MQ. The bridge between WebSphere MQ and CEI (Common Event Infrastructure) on the IBM Business Monitor server is a WebSphere MQ binding.
To better understand its scope and how to use it, IBM provides a series of manuals with programming and reference material for Customer Information Control System, including its administration and operations and communications between products.
What are the benefits of CICS?
CICS Transaction Server is an essential solution for organizations that require a Efficient, reliable and secure transactional processing in your mainframe environments.
Why? Because it facilitates both the operation of legacy applications and integration and modernization with contemporary technologies.
Its main advantages include:
- Reliability and stability: It is known for its robustness and ability to operate without interruptions in critical environments.
- Outstanding performance: Provides fast response times and the ability to handle large transaction volumes.
- Flexibility and adaptability: enables organizations to modernize their legacy applications and adopt new technologies without disrupting existing operations.
- Support ecosystem: is supported by IBM through continuous updates, technical support and an active community of users and developers.
Use cases of CICs
As we explained above, the Customer Information Control System Transaction Server is used by various industries and sectors.
For example, for the real-time banking transaction processing, such as fund transfers, payments, and balance inquiries.
Or for the inventory management, he order processing and retail point-of-sale transactions.
At the government level, in the tax, social security and other public services management systems.
While in the insurance field, CICS is used for the Policy processing, claims and customer management.
How to improve mainframe performance and increase availability?
In order to determine the best way to optimize performance and Increase mainframe availability by improving CICS configuration, it is important to carry out two types of evaluations:
- CICS Assessment Configuration
- CICS Assessment Transactional
to) A configuration assessment It is a process performed to evaluate the status of the CICS configuration.
Its objective is to identify any problems or areas for improvement in the CICS configuration that may be affecting the performance or availability of the mainframe.
Among the actions included are:
- Review the current CICS configuration, to modify any problems or areas for improvement in the configuration
- Identification of problems, such as response time, CPU consumption, or both. Along with determining the days and times when this problem occurs and the coincidence with batch tasks that compete for processors.
- Collecting data across all CICS, using tools such as performance monitoring and event and transaction recorders.
- Analyze the collected data to identify any issues or areas for improvement in CICS performance.
The recommendation is to prepare a report with proposals on changes in the CICS configuration, in the implementation of applications and the optimization of resources.
b) The transactional assessment is a process performed to evaluate the performance of CICS transactions on a mainframe.
Its objective is Identify any issues or areas for improvement in transaction performance that may be affecting user satisfaction or the availability of the environment.
The actions included in this process include:
- Analysis of configuration assessment reports, where response and waiting times are evaluated, with high activity volumes and high CPU consumption.
- Transactional architecture status, analyzing the CICS architecture and its relationships.
- Processing status, with an analysis of program CPU consumption, indexed files, CICS resources, and DB2 access.
- Analysis of the collected data to identify any issues or areas for improvement in CICS performance.
The suggestion is to develop a load sizing report, an appropriate configuration for efficient use of resources, a transactional status report and metrics, and an action plan.
10 strategies for achieving efficient and scalable mainframes
Considering the assessments that must be performed to improve performance and increase mainframe availability, through optimized CICS configuration, it is important to highlight that achieving this objective also involves a series of practices and adjustments.
These actions will help ensure that the mainframe environment is efficient, resilient and capable of handling large transaction volumes with high availability.
Some key strategies to consider:
1. Parameter tuning
CICS allows you to configure regions to separate workloads. For example, you can have specific regions for critical transactions and others for less-priority workloads.
It also offers the ability to configure the sizes of dynamic storage (DSA) and dynamic extended storage (EDSA) pools to suit application needs.
Additionally, it allows to optimize the use of dedicated task control blocks (TCBs) for Java, Cobol and other specific task applications to improve concurrency and performance.
2. Improved resource management
Properly configured buffer pools prevent data access bottlenecks, while optimizing the configuration of VTAM, TCP/IP, and MQ sessions provides improved communication efficiency.
The key is to monitor and adjust configurations to minimize deadlocks and contention when accessing shared resources.
3. Use of monitoring and tuning tools
CICS Performance Analyzer (CICS PA) enables you to analyze and understand performance patterns and tune configurations based on historical data.
Meanwhile, Omegamon monitors in real time and dynamically adjusts CICS configuration based on workload needs.
4. Increased availability
Deploying and configuring CICSplex allows you to distribute the workload across multiple CICS regions, providing load balancing and redundancy.
Sysplex provides high availability and disaster recovery. This way, multiple systems can operate as a single logical entity.
5. Preventive maintenance and patches
Applying patches and updates to CICS and the z/OS operating system on a regular basis ensures that your system is protected from vulnerabilities and benefits from performance and stability improvements.
6. Resilience and recovery
When transaction logs and journals are configured correctly, they allow for rapid recovery in the event of failures. In this regard, it is important to implement automated procedures for failure recovery and restart of CICS services.
7. Load balancing and failover
The recommendation is Configure load balancing to evenly distribute transactions across CICS regions.
Similarly, configure failover mechanisms so that, in the event that a CICS region fails, another region automatically assumes its workload.
8. Application optimization
Reviewing, analyzing, and optimizing application code improves the efficiency of CICS resource use.
It is also important to ensure that applications are threadsafe, to allow concurrent use of TCBs, and improve performance and scalability.
9. Implementation and monitoring
Load testing is critical to identify and resolve bottlenecks before implementing changes in production.
In addition to continuously monitoring performance and availability after applying optimizations to validate their effectiveness.
10. Documentation and training
One suggestion to keep in mind is to maintain detailed documentation of the configuration and optimization practices applied.
Without failing to emphasize that IT staff must be trained in the best practices for CICS management and optimization.
Conclusion
CICS continues to evolve to meet the challenges of a modern IT landscape, seamlessly integrating with web services, cloud architectures and big data.
This is how they analyze it in the Mainframe Forum, highlighting that for mainframe systems, CICS remains a solid foundation for reliable transaction processing across a variety of industries.
We invite you to learn how We transform the Mainframe for the future at IT Patagonia, with the help of teams with more than 35 years of experience in this technology.
