z/Journal recently conducted a survey with its readers regarding CICS usage today and issues central to organizations that rely on it. This report provides an analysis of what that data reveals.

The results from the z/Journal 2010 CICS survey show that, for IT professionals, sharing VSAM data concurrently between batch jobs and CICS is highly important. A majority of participants (83 percent) rank the number one successful strategy they have implemented as updating their business-critical applications in one way or another—through modernizing, Web services implementations, or streamlining the VSAM batch environment.

This report presents results from z/Journal’s 2010 CICS survey in terms of extending mainframe data or applications to other environments without adding cost and complexity. The report also addresses questions about the difficulties of accessing nonrelational data like VSAM in these other environments and how to make it easier to access data using current technologies and approaches such as Web services and SOA.

What are the alternatives for making VSAM data available to batch and CICS at the same time? This white paper provides an overview of the approaches such as SHAREOPTIONs, VSAM RLS, TVS, and one that allows CICS to have full access to VSAM files while batch runs.

Mainframe data still drives the world's information systems. Unlocking this data, keeping it available, and maintaining its integrity in a cost effective way is a pressing business challenge. One of the more common mainframe data scenarios involves CICS applications that require VSAM data.

While companies have to run batch in order to provide up-to-date information to online users, the traditional batch process still leaves those users without full access to VSAM data. Companies have reduced the batch window and forced batch updates to late-night windows when demand is low. But application downtime or limited access due to batch continues to affect users and other systems that rely on VSAM data.

In this white paper, you'll learn about some of the conventional approaches such as SHAREOPTIONs, VSAM RLS, and TVS, to solving the limitations of the batch window. This installment also discusses a solution that eliminates underlying batch conflict issues to deliver true data availability. VSAM files are shared inside of CICS, making batch jobs appear like any other online transaction, so CICS continues to have full READ/WRITE access even during batch. From the series Concurrent VSAM access for batch and CICS.

When CICS applications that rely on VSAM data are offline or relying on outdated VSAM data due to batch processes, productivity stalls, crucial information is unavailable, and decisions are delayed. This white paper explores issues relevant to batch and CICS file sharing and the Transactional VSAM (TVS, or DFSMStvs) solution.

You'll see how TVS works, the benefits, and the issues to consider. Read this guide if you are considering TVS or other solutions for concurrent sharing of VSAM files between CICS and batch processing. From the series Concurrent VSAM access for batch and CICS.

This white paper explores issues relevant to sharing VSAM files between CICS and batch using the VSAM record-level sharing (RLS) method.

VSAM RLS was designed to enable VSAM files to be shared with full update capability between many applications running in many CICS regions. Read this white paper for a more detailed look at this solution and the changes required to use files in VSAM RLS mode for batch and CICS processing. From the series Concurrent VSAM access for batch and CICS.

In this white paper, you'll review the concept of concurrent VSAM file-sharing, which creates a virtual processing window in CICS. By sharing VSAM files between CICS and batch from within CICS, you can rely on the strengths of CICS and avoid the pain that can come with other methods of sharing.

You will read about the concepts that underlie this type of solution and the issues to consider with any method of sharing VSAM files. These topics are architecture; performance, reliability, and scalability; recovery; and CICSplex and sysplex scalability. From the series Concurrent VSAM access for batch and CICS.