The planned General Availability for CICS Transaction Server V3.2 is June 29, 2007. CICS Transaction Server V3.2 was announced on March 27, 2007:
http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/1/897/ENUS207-051/ENUS207051.PDF In this announcement, IBM warned that orders will not be accepted for the CICS TS 3.1 Service Flow Feature upon GA of CICS TS V3.2. However, the CICS TS V3.2 Service Flow Feature will not be generally available until sometime in the second half of 2007. The Service Flow Feature is a no charge component, and I would recommend that, if you have not done so already, and if you have CICS TS V3.1, you place an order immediately for SFF. The CICS Service Flow Feature is described in greater detail here: http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/rep_ca/3/897/ENUS205-303/ENUS205-303.PDF and in the above announcement. Your CICS TS V3.1 Service Flow Feature order will also include WebSphere Developer for System z V7.0. The terms of your CICS TS 3.1 license permit use of one user copy of WDz for any purpose plus 10 user copies of WDz for the proscribed list of tasks, including the Service Flow Modeler (to produce SFF binaries) and CICS Web services. If you have already ordered the no charge Service Flow Feature for CICS TS 3.1, but you do not have WDz V7.0 or the latest SFF runtime, please request PTF UQ20322 for APAR PK32131. Please be aware that, when available, CICS TS V3.2's Service Flow Feature will not be able to run V3.1 SFF binaries as-is. However, compatibility will be preserved at the tooling (modeler) level, so you will simply regenerate your SFF binaries for the new version. IBM's goal is to preserve binary compatibility, but this was not technically possible in this particular case. Make sure you document this requirement and plan accordingly for your upgrade to CICS TS V3.2. (Shouldn't be a big deal, but just be aware.) Please get your no charge Service Flow Feature order in now, before it is too late. The program number is 5655-M15, and the feature number is 9001. The orderable supply ID is S0129LW. Please order via Customized Offerings (CBPDO, ServerPac, SystemPac) in your choice of media type or as electronic delivery (ShopzSeries) if available in your country. Here's a brief excerpt from the Service Flow Feature announcement letter: "CICS Service Flow Feature [...] enables CICS application interfaces to be composed to form CICS business services that expose high-level business function interfaces. The CICS business service captures the transition between many different application logic components in terms of a flow. The resulting business service performs a high level purpose (for example, order fulfilment or bill payment), that is meaningful to an external system as a reusable service." I should add that this is without coding. It uses a graphical modeler (in WDz) to "wire" CICS transactions, then produces a binary which runs in CICS (in the Service Flow Runtime). There is also the option to drive 3270 interfaces as part of the flow. You don't have to have "clean" COMMAREA or container access to every CICS program to get the job done. You can download and view some recorded videos of the Service Flow Modeler here: http://websphere.dfw.ibm.com/whidemo/atdemo_wsed_sfm_recorded.html It's a very powerful tool, priced at zero, and, again, I urge everyone with CICS TS V3.1 to order it, at least to obtain the marketing promotion copy of WDz V7.0. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Specializing in Software Architectures Related to System z Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
