IBM® CICS® Plug-in for Zowe CLI

The IBM® CICS® Plug-in for Zowe™ CLI lets you extend Zowe CLI to interact with CICS programs and transactions. The plug-in uses the IBM CICS® Management Client Interface (CMCI) API to achieve the interaction with CICS. For more information, see CICS management client interface on the IBM Knowledge Center.

• Use Cases
• Commands
• Software requirements
• Installing
• Creating a user profile

Use cases

As an application developer, you can use the plug-in to perform the following tasks:

• Deploy code changes to CICS applications that were developed with COBOL.
• Deploy changes to CICS regions for testing or delivery. See the define command for an example of how you can define programs to CICS to assist with testing and delivery.
• Automate CICS interaction steps in your CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins Automation Server or TravisCI.
• Deploy build artifacts to CICS regions.
• Alter, copy, define, delete, discard, and install CICS resources and resource definitions.

Commands

For detailed documentation on commands, actions, and options available in this plug-in, see our Web Help. It is available for download in three formats: a PDF document, an interactive online version, and a ZIP file containing the HTML for the online version.

• Browse Online
• Download (ZIP)
• Download (PDF)

Software requirements

Before you install the plug-in, meet the software requirements in Software requirements for Zowe CLI plug-ins.

Installing

Use one of the following methods to install or update the plug-in:

• Installing plug-ins from an online registry

• Installing plug-ins from a local package

Creating a user profile

You create a cics profile to avoid entering your connection details each time that you issue a command. You can create multiple profiles and switch between them as needed. Use one of the following methods to create a profile:

• Create plug-in profiles using a configuration file: Specify your profile and connection details in the zowe.config.json configuration file.
• Create plug-in profiles using a command: Issue the zowe profiles create command to create the profile. We recommend that you create profiles using the configuration file. We do not recommend using profile commands because we are removing them from a future major release.

Creating plug-in profiles using a configuration file

When you issue various zowe config commands, such as init, auto-init, and convert-profiles, they create a zowe.config.json configuration file. When you install the CICS plug-in, the commands create an entry for a cics profile in your zowe.config.json file.

Alternatively, you can create a CICS profile manually by adding a section that contains the configuration details to your zowe.config.json configuration file.

1. Browse to the following directory C:\Users\<username>\.zowe

2. Open the zowe.config.json configuration file using a text editor or IDE, such as Visual Studio Code or IntelliJ.

   NOTE: If the file does not exist, issue the following command to create the configuration file:

   zowe config init --gc

3. Add code to the "profiles" section as shown in the following example: :

   "Your_cics_profile": {
     "type": "cics",
     "properties": {
         "host": "Your_host_name",
         "port": Your_port_number,
         "regionName": “Your_CICS_region”
     },
     "secure": [
       "user",
       "password"
     ]
   }

4. Save the file.

You can now use your profile when you issue commands in the cics command group.

Creating plug-in profiles using a command

The following steps describe how to create a profile using the zowe profiles create command.

1. Open a terminal window and issue the following command:

   zowe profiles create cics <profile_name> –-host <host> --port <port> --user <user> --password <password> --region-name <region>

• profile_name:

  Specifies a name for your profile.

• host:

  Specifies the host name for the instance.

• user:

  Specifies your user name to log in to the instance.

• password:

  Specifies your password to log in to the instance.

• port:

  Specifies the port number to connect to the instance.

• region:

  Specifies the region to use on the instance.

  Example:

  zowe profiles create cics-profile REGION1 --host mylpar.zowe.org --port 1443 --user zowe --password zowepass --region-name CICCMCI

2. Press Enter. The result of the command displays as a success or failure message.

You can now use your profile when you issue commands in the cics command group.

The plug-in uses HTTPS by default. Use the optional flag --protocol http to override the default with HTTP.