EntireX Version 9.7
 —  CICS ECI RPC Server  —

Administrating EntireX CICS® ECI RPC Server

The EntireX CICS® ECI RPC Server allows standard RPC clients to communicate with CICS programs running on IBM CICS® version 3.2 and higher. The CICS ECI RPC Server transforms the RPCs from the clients into messages to CICS ECI. The CICS ECI RPC Server acts on one side as an RPC server and on the other side as a client for CICS ECI. The CICS ECI RPC Server is a Java-based component that can run on a different host to the one where CICS is running. This allows it to operate with a zero footprint of EntireX on the CICS host.

This document covers the following topics:


Customizing the CICS ECI RPC Server

For the setup of the CICS ECI RPC Server there are

Location of the CICS ECI RPC Server

The CICS ECI RPC Server is contained in the file entirex.jar.

The Configuration File

The default name of the configuration file is entirex.cicseci.properties. The CICS ECI RPC Server searches for this file in the current working directory.

You can set the name of the configuration file with -Dentirex.server.properties=<your file name> with "/" as file separator.

The configuration file contains the configuration for both parts of the CICS ECI RPC Server.

graphics/cicsEci_config.png

Start of instruction setTo set up the CICS ECI RPC Server

  1. Use the RPC server agent of the System Management Hub.

  2. Add the CICS ECI RPC Server as an RPC server.

    See Administering the EntireX RPC Servers using System Management Hub under UNIX | Windows for details.

    Or:
    Use the scripts to start the CICS ECI RPC Server.

    Both scripts use the configuration file entirex.cicseci.properties in the folder etc.

Configuring more than one CICS ECI RPC Server

If you configure more than one CICS ECI RPC Server that connect to the same EntireX Broker, the following items must be distinct:

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Configuring the RPC Server Side

The RPC server side of the CICS ECI RPC Server is configured like the Java RPC Server. The CICS ECI RPC Server uses the properties that start with "entirex.server".

The RPC server side can adjust the number of worker threads to the number of parallel requests. Use the properties entirex.server.fixedservers, entirex.server.maxservers and entirex.server.minservers to configure this scalability.

If more than entirex.server.minservers are waiting for requests, a worker thread stops if its receive call times out. The timeout period is configured with entirex.server.waitserver.

Alternatively to the properties, you can use the command-line option. The command-line options have a higher priority than the properties set as Java system properties and these have higher priority than the properties in the configuration file.

Name Command-line Option Default Value Explanation
entirex.bridge.verbose   no Verbose/trace mode of CICS ECI RPC Server. Set this to "yes" to trace sent to CICS ECI.
entirex.server.brokerid -broker localhost Broker ID
entirex.server.serveraddress -server RPC/SRV1/CALLNAT Server address.
entirex.server.userid -user CICSECIRPCServer The user ID for the Broker for RPC. See entirex.server.password.
entirex.server.fixedservers   no
no Use attach server to manage worker threads.
yes Run minimum number of server threads.
entirex.server.minservers   1 Minimum number of server threads.
entirex.server.maxservers   32 Maximum number of server threads.
entirex.server.restartcycles -restartcycles 15 Number of restart attempts if the Broker is not available. This can be used to keep the CICS ECI RPC Server running while the Broker is down for a short time.
entirex.server.password -password   The password for secured access to the Broker.
The password is encrypted and written to the property entirex.server.password.e.
To change the password, set the new password in the properties file (default is entirex.cicseci.properties).
To disable password encryption set entirex.server.passwordencrypt=no. Default for this property is "yes".
entirex.server.security -security no no|yes|auto|name of BrokerSecurity object
entirex.server.encryptionlevel   0 Encryption level. Valid values: 0,1,2.
entirex.server.compresslevel -compresslevel 0 Permitted values (you can enter the text or the numeric value)
BEST_COMPRESSION 9
BEST_SPEED 1
DEFAULT_COMPRESSION -1, mapped to 6
DEFLATED 8
NO_COMPRESSION 0
N 0
Y 8
entirex.server.waitattach   600S Wait timeout for the attach server thread.
entirex.server.waitserver   300S Wait timeout for the worker threads.
entirex.timeout   20 TCP/IP transport timeout. See Setting the Transport Timeout under Writing Advanced Applications - EntireX Java ACI.
entirex.server.verbose -verbose no Enable verbose output to the log file.
entirex.server.logfile -logfile   Name of the log file, default is standard output.
entirex.trace -trace 0 Trace level (1,2,3).
entirex.server.monitorport -smhport 0 The port where the server listens for commands from the System Management Hub (SMH). If this port is 0, no port is used and management by the SMH is disabled.

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Configuring the CICS ECI Side

These properties are used to configure the connection to CICS ECI.

Alternatively, you can use the command-line option. The command-line options have a higher priority than the properties set as Java system properties and these have higher priority than the properties in the configuration file.

Name Default Value Explanation
cics.host   Host name of CICS ECI. Mandatory.
cics.port   Port number of CICS ECI. Mandatory.
cics.transaction   Name of the CICS mirror transaction that will receive transactions. Mandatory.
entirex.bridge.targetencoding cp037 Specify the appropriate EBCDIC encoding used by your CICS ECI. This codepage is also used when communicating with the EntireX Broker.

Note:
Enable conversion in the Broker attribute file so the data can be converted correctly, typically by setting service-specific attribute CONVERSION to "SAGTCHA".

Default "cp037" is EBCDIC codepage with full Latin-1 character set.

cics.sockettimeout 10000 Socket timeout for connection to CICS ECI (in milliseconds).
cics.userid   RACF user ID. Maximum 8 bytes (optional).
cics.password   RACF password/PassTicket. Maximum 8 bytes (optional).
cics.sslparams   SSL parameters (optional). Same syntax as Broker ID.
cics.mapping.folder   The folder where the RPC server expects server-side mapping files (EntireX Workbench files with extension .svm). See Deploying Server-side Mapping Files to the RPC Server and Undeploying Server-side Mapping Files to the RPC Server.

There are also client-side mapping files that do not require configuration here. See Server Mapping Files for COBOL.

If no server requires server-side mapping, you can omit this property.

If one server requires server-side mapping, this property must be specified.

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Starting the CICS ECI RPC Server

Start of instruction setTo start the CICS ECI RPC Server

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Stopping the CICS ECI RPC Server

Start of instruction setTo stop the CICS ECI RPC Server

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Application Identification

The application identification is sent from the CICS ECI RPC Server to the Broker. It is visible with Broker Command and Information Services.

The identification consists of four parts: name, node, type, and version. These four parts are sent with each Broker call and are visible in the trace information.

For the CICS ECI RPC Server, these values are:

Identification Part Value
Application name ANAME=CICS ECI RPC Server
Node name ANODE=<host name>
Application type ATYPE=Java
Version AVERS=9.5.0.0

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