CICS TS Feature Pack for Mobile Extensions V1.0

The CICS® TS Feature Pack for Mobile Extensions builds on the service-oriented architecture (SOA) capabilities in CICS to work with JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Using this feature pack you can expose CICS applications as web services with JSON payloads, create new RESTful applications, call existing JSON applications, and convert JSON from any source to and from application data.

The Mobile Extensions Feature Pack version 1.0 requires CICS TS for z/OS®, Version 5.1 or CICS TS for z/OS, Version 4.2.

Using this feature pack gives the following benefits:
Note: If you want to write a Java™ or JAX-RS application to process JSON you can use the Liberty profile JSON feature available in CICS TS V5.1. For more information, see Java web applications.

Benefits of using IBM Worklight with the Mobile Extensions Feature Pack

IBM Worklight acts as a gateway and concentrator between thousands of mobile devices and enterprise back-end systems such as CICS. You can use IBM Worklight to protect your CICS systems, preventing direct access from mobile phones to CICS. IBM Worklight acts as mobile middeware between the phone and your back-end system.

Use IBM Worklight when you want to deploy an enterprise mobile application across the business. The benefits include the following:
  • Authentication/Entitlement
  • Multi-platform build
  • Server side adapters
  • Server App lifecycle management
  • Notification framework
  • Encrypted local data store
  • Enterprise App store
  • Graphical Dojo application development
  • Simulators
For more information about IBM Worklight calling back-end services, see Overview of IBM Worklight adapters.
Figure 1. CICS to Worklight topology
This diagram illustrates the typical CICS to Worklight topology.

Benefits of JSON

The CICS Mobile Extensions Feature Pack provides functions that can speed up, simplify, and promote mobile application development. The benefits include the following:
  • JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is easy to understand and fast to parse in mobile applications.
  • The RESTful web services architecture is lightweight compared to SOA.
  • Performance improvements can be achieved when enterprise JSON applications are hosted in CICS because they have direct access to CICS assets and data.

Architecture of JSON support in CICS

The following diagram illustrates the architecture of JSON support in CICS and the flow of JSON requests. This architecture builds on the existing pipeline infrastructure that is used to implement CICS web services support by using the extension points it provides.

Figure 2. Architecture of JSON support in CICS
This diagram illustrates the JSON support in CICS architecture.

For more information about how CICS resources are used, see How CICS resources are used by JSON web services.

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mobileextensions_overview.html | Timestamp icon Last updated: Thursday, 27 June 2019