The Web services support in CICS® Transaction Server Version 3 enables your CICS programs to be Web service providers or requesters. CICS supports a number of specifications including SOAP Version 1.1 and Version 1.2, and Web services distributed transactions (WS-Atomic Transaction).

This IBM® Redbooks® publication reviews CICS Web Services performance in two particular areas:

MTOM/XOP: Here we focus on performance benefits that can be achieved by taking advantage of the MTOM/XOP standard to transmit large binary data objects. The single inquiry function of the CICS catalog manager application has been modified to return an image of the requested item in addition to its details. This function is exposed through a Web service.

Security: There are a number of ways to secure your CICS Web Services messages. Here we look at two technologies: WS-Security and DataPower®. We compare the performance and relative merits of using WS-Security with and without DataPower, and discuss what factors might influence your choice of technology.

We highlight tools that can help you to understand the performance profile of Web service interactions with CICS, such as;

- RMF z/OS® Resource Measurement Facility (RMF)

- IBM CICS Performance Analyzer for z/OS (CICSPA)

- ITCAM for SOA

- OMEGAMON® XE for CICS on z/OS

This book considers performance by using different scenarios including Security, MTOM/XOP, and the use of the IBM Tivoli® Monitoring tools to help identify problems that can affect the performance of Web Services. Specifically, we use ITCAM for SOA and OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS to show how these tools can be of benefit to identify the cause when the performance of a Web service in CICS becomes unacceptable.

Part 1. Introduction

Chapter 1. CICS Web Services overview

Chapter 2. Web Services performance considerations

Part 2. CICS Tools overview

Chapter 3. RMF

Chapter 4. CICS PA

Chapter 5. IBM Tivoli Monitoring

Chapter 6. ITCAM FOR SOA

Chapter 7. OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS

Part 3. Performance scenarios

Chapter 8. Environment overview

Chapter 9. MTOM scenario

Chapter 10. Security scenarios

Chapter 11. Using IBM Tivoli Monitoring Tools

Appendix A. The modified catalog manager application

Appendix B. XSL to add UsernameToken in DataPower

Appendix C. Additional material