CICS Transaction Gateway (CTG) testing and VSE recording

Products

• CA Application Test
• CA Continuous Application Insight (PathFinder)
• Service Virtualization

Issue/Introduction

The CICS Transaction Gateway (CTG)  is a way to run (LINK) CICS programs from a Java program.

The CTG virtualization is done “on the wire”, so the mainframe is needed for recording only. Playback virtualizes out the mainframe completely.

The virtual service is deployed on the workstation, not to the mainframe. It does not involve the mainframe agents.

The mapping for CTG is different than for CICS virtualization (which uses matchType="metaData" key="Program_name" value="DEMOINQ "). CTG Copybook processing uses matchType="operation" key="DEMOINQ"

We support CTG 7.2, 8.x, and 9.x.

 

Environment

All supported DevTest releases.

Cause

N/A

Resolution

CTG recording and playback walkthrough

Connect to ETPGZOS vpn
In Workstation, create project CTG
Copy contents of unzipped ..\ctgclnt\CTG_Clients\Data to project Data folder
In Workstation:
Start the VSE Recorder
Enter info for a CTG recording:

Enter the following. The “Listen/Record on port” is the port number that the DevTest “listener” aka “man in the middle” listens on in your workstation. It can be any port that is not in use on your workstation. I use a port number different than the actual CTG port number on the mainframe to avoid confusion. The remaining info is the IP address and port number of the CTG server on the mainframe that DevTest will forward things to.

 

Recording begins:

 

For this example, we will use the IBM sample client. Either would work.

Double click on ..\ctgclnt\CTG_Clients\IBM_Sample\DEMOINQ_Virt.bat​

Recordings appear:

 

 

Add copybook data protocols:

 

 

Add copybook config:

 

 

This panel shows up because we did not check the “Treat all transactions as stateless” box earlier.

 

We don’t need to do anything here – click Next.
 

Save the recording config with the little folder in the lower right corner if you want.

 

Click Next.
 
Edit the second transaction, first exact response (after the meta response):

 

 

Deploy the virtual service

Double click on ..\ctgclnt\CTG_Clients\IBM_Sample\DEMOINQ_Virt.bat

And see the edits in the response (DEMOGETN-MSG).

The virtual service can be stopped in the Portal, or use this shortcut:

Open a command prompt.

Change into your DevTest bin folder.

cd C:\Program Files\CA\DevTestxx.x.x\bin

List virtual services.

VSEManager --vse VSE --username=admin --password=admin --status all

Stop the virtual services.

VSEManager --vse VSE --username=admin --password=admin --stop DEMOINQ

Additional Information

Refer to section "CICS Transaction Gateway (ECI) Transport Protocol" in the documentation of the DevTest release you are running.