The Structure of CICS

The Structure of CICS

The CICS region is the area of storage that CICS manages. User programs share the CICS region with other CICS components.

1.       Single region

2.       CICSPlex

When CICS is structured into multiple regions, the resulting architecture is called a CICSPlex. The different regions within a CICSPlex may reside in:

l         The same MVS image

l         Different MVS images

l         Different operating systems, for example, MVS, VSE, OS/390

l         Different hardware platforms, for example, S/390, PC, AS/400

CICS TS for OS/390 is commonly divided into three regions:

l         Terminal Owning Region (TOR)

l         Application Owning Region (AOR)

l         File Owning Region (FOR)

3.       Parallel Sysplex clustering

Advantage:

l         Sysplex clustering helps prevent downtime, since other OS/390 systems are available and can take over if one system fails. OS/390 systems linked in a sysplex are often located in different cities, preventing a full system failure in the event of a localized natural disaster.

l         Another advantage to this type of distributed system is the nearly unlimited grows that a sysplex model can accommodate. As business needs change, the present systems can be expanded or reconfigured, and more systems can be added to the sysplex in order to handle new data streams.