CICS® Explorer™ is the latest significant evolution in the management and analysis of your CICS environment. It is a statement of intent from the CICS Development organization, which is determined to ensure you can manage your CICS estate in a simple and easily extensible way, using a combination of the following approaches:

• Tried and trusted CICS expertise and technology
• The widely accepted user interfaces and integration power of the open source Eclipse platform
• Web 2.0 and RESTful programming (this technology underpins the CICS Explorer concept)

This IBM® Redbooks® publication shows how you can use the extensible design of CICS Explorer to complement the functionality already provided, with added functionality tailored to the needs of your business. We show you how to perform the following tasks:

• Install the CICS plug-in SDK into your eclipse environment
• Develop a simple plug-in for the CICS Explorer
• Deploy the plug-in into CICS Explorer

We provide several useful examples of plug-ins that we developed during the residency using the methodology we describe.

The starting point for the book is that you already have CICS Explorer installed and configured with connectivity to your CICS region or CICSPlex®, and that you are looking for ways to customize CICS Explorer.

Part 1. Introduction

Chapter 1. CICS Evolution

Part 2. Exploring CICS Explorer

Chapter 2. CICS Explorer and the CICS Client Management Interface

Chapter 3. CICS Explorer SDK

Part3. Extending CICS Explorer

Chapter 4. Writing a plug-in for CICS Explorer

Chapter 5. Extending CICS Explorer plug-ins

Part 4. Integrating CICS Explorer with other Eclipse Components

Chapter 6. Combining OMEGAMON data with CICS Explorer

Chapter 7. Setting CICS Trace Levels through CICS Explorer

Chapter 8. Adding a sticky note plug-in to CICS Explorer

Chapter 9. Implementing a CEBR view in CICS Explorer

Appendix A. Reference list of CICS SDK elements

Appendix B. Additional material