PIE/CICS, Productivity Integrated Environment for z/OS / CICS Transaction Server is an integrated family of common and optional components. With PIE/CICS administrators can create user profiles extending the user sessions to 99 simultaneous applications running in separate sessions.
With PIE/CICS you can build secure menus that contain multiple applications and transactions without changing existing CICS applications. When used as a CICS based application, these menus greatly simplify site navigation and shorten learning curves.
Eliminate the need for the user to Sign On to each application and/or transaction. PIE/CICS seamlessly authenticates users to external security systems (RACF, CA-ACF2, CA-Top Secret) and to internal application security. PIE/CICS Single Sign On saves valuable time and reduces user frustration.
PIE/CICS-DynamicMenus is an optional PIE/CICS component that provides a more friendly approach to creating secure menus by eliminating blank CICS screen tranID usage and arguments. In a native CICS environment, users get the CICS blank screen and they must enter full transactions. When one transaction is finished, users have to enter another transaction. There is nothing on the screen to assist them. Because users have to enter transaction IDs and arguments, they need to be trained in the precise syntax of their transactions. If the transaction syntax is complex or cryptic, there is plenty of room for error and frustration. Changes in transaction syntax require user re-training. The consequence of these problems is low productivity and high operating cost.
Many installations create menu applications to get around the problems described above. While these menus help, often they do not completely eliminate the CICS blank screen. When users sign on, they get the blank screen and must enter the menu transaction. From time to time, users must enter another transaction to bring up a different menu or application. Most CICS menu systems give control to a menu line by either transferring control to a program with the XCTL command or using ATI START to start a transaction. These menu facilities suffer from the following problems:
PIE/CICS-DynamicMenus uses a different method, called transaction XCTL, which “XCTL’s” to the transaction instead of the program. This method solves all of these problems.
While PIE/CICS-DynamicMenus does not ordinarily use ATI START or XCTL to a program, it is flexible, and it allows you to specify either of these methods to execute a particular menu line.