• NeoKicks Project Wizard imports your CICS COBOL code into Visual Studio 2005 projects, preprocessing EXEC CICS statements into the NeoKicks equivalents
• Wizard also converts your screens into ASP.NET Web Forms that you maintain using Visual Studio's designers
• NeoKicks Services provide runtime support for CICS commands
• Configure styles of your converted BMS maps using ASP.NET master pages and cascading style sheets
• CICS DPL (Distributed Program Link) transactions convert to Web services
• Integration with Visual Studio 2005 gives productive and easy-to-use development environment
• Transaction support for any ODBC data provider, Btrieve or any other external transaction monitor
• User interface and application tiers are separable allowing flexible deployment options
• Mainframe UI behaviors emulated such as: Overtype behavior, Tabbing behavior, PF keys, PA keys & Break

Benefits

CICS modernization with NeoKicks provides the following compelling benefits:

• Cost effective, scalable, hardware platform - Windows servers have very attractive price:performance ratios
• Escape from a proprietary hardware and software environment in which enhancements come from a single vendor
• Enter an open environment where enhancements and new technologies are being provided by multiple vendors
• Modernize application interfaces (in a controlled manner - opt for mainframe look and feel until you are ready to move to GUI)
• Expose existing business logic as Web services
• Provide your programmers with the world's best development environment (Visual Studio 2005)

Detailed Features and Benefits

NeoKicks is CICS migration software for migrating CICS applications to the Microsoft .NET environment. The tables below list key features and benefits for each of its components.

NeoKicks Services
Visual Studio 2005 Integration
Utilities
User Interface Options and Features
Architecture

NeoKicks Service

Feature Summary		Detail of Feature	Benefit of Feature
Services		NeoKicks Services provide BMS mapping, COBOL file I/O, commit/rollback transaction coordination with SQL database and VSAM file I/O, temporary storage queues and abend handling.	Your existing CICS developers can easily understand the migrated code.
CICS commands supported		ABEND ADDRESS ASKTIME ASSIGN BIF DEEDIT DELETE DELETEQ TD/TS ENDBR FORMATTIME FREEMAIN GETMAIN HANDLE ABEND HANDLE AID HANDLE CONDITION IGNORE CONDITION LINK POP HANDLE PUSH HANDLE READ READNEXT READPREV READQ TD/TS RECEIVE RECEIVE MAP RESETBR RETRIEVE RETURN REWRITE SEND SEND MAP SEND TEXT START STARTBR SYNCPOINT UNLOCK WRITE WRITEQ TD/TS XCTL	Easy migration of the majority of CICS applications.

Visual Studio 2005 Integration
NeoKicks is designed to work within Visual Studio 2005. Its functions can be invoked from Visual Studio 2005 menus and new project creation dialogs; error messages are displayed in the Output window and link to the error locations; and fully populated projects are created by its wizard.

Utilities

Feature Summary		Detail of Feature	Benefit of Feature
Theme Manager		The form and style of the GUI screens created by the NeoKicks Wizard (whether Web or Windows forms) is controlled by XLST files. The Theme Manager helps you manage which style will be used in future BMS map conversions.	Simplifies switching between different interface styles.
Settings Manager		Manages the information that would be stored in the mainframe's PCT and FCT files. The Settings Manager provides an easy-to-use interactive interface for maintaining this information. The information is stored in the .NET config file associated with the application.	Convenient, user-friendly maintenance of runtime settings.

User Interface Options and Features

Feature Summary		Detail of Feature	Benefit of Feature
ASP.NET Pages (Web Forms)		NeoKicks generates Web Forms from your CICS BMS maps. Web Forms provide a thin-client model in which user interaction is through a Web browser with no application code on the client machine.	Puts your CICS application interfaces in the best place to take them forward into the future.
Mainframe compatible behavior		With IE browsers, NeoKicks emulates mainframe behaviors such as: overtype, tabbing, PF keys, PA keys & Break.	Gives minimal disruption to users when switching from mainframe CICS to NeoKicks with this unique CICS migration software
Visual Basic, C# or COBOL		Web Forms can be generated in Visual Basic, C# or COBOL-supported forms.	Lets you choose the language that best fits your needs and expertise.
Master page and style sheet configuration		The Web Forms generated by NeoKicks use the standard ASP.NET features of master pages and cascading style sheets to configure common page style features.	Makes it easy to configure common features across screens
Separable interface and application tiers		NeoKicks is architected so that you can separate the interface and application tiers.	Gives you flexible deployment options, such has having your application tier behind a separate firewall.
Maintain/extend using Web Forms		The Web Forms Designer is a state-of-the-art interface design tool integrated with Visual Studio 2005. Now you can use this quality tool to maintain and enhance the screens you migrate from mainframe CICS.	Your developers have a much more productive means of creating and maintaining the interfaces to your CICS applications.

Architecture
The figure below illustrates the NeoKicks architecture and the following table describes some of its key points.

Feature Summary		Detail of Feature	Benefit of Feature
Multiple tier deployment		NeoKicks is architected so that you can separate the interface and application tiers.	Gives you flexible CICS migration deployment options.
Pluggable components		Where different installations may want different behaviors NeoKicks provides plug-ins that can be tailored to match your particular requirements. Pluggable components are provided for: Transaction handling ASSIGN statement support	Gives you the ability to obtain the behavior that you require.
Web Service		Applications created to support Distributed Program Links can quickly be transformed into Web services using NeoKicks.	Lets you offer some of your existing services within the growing, platform-independent world of Web services.

• Microsoft® Windows® XP
• Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005®
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
• NetCOBOL for .NET V3

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What products are required to support NeoKicks?

Migrating CICS Code

2. Are some CICS applications better candidates for legacy modernization than others?
3. What changes do I need to make to my CICS application code?
4. Are there issues in migrating EBCDIC code to the Unicode .NET environment?
5. How closely does NeoKicks emulate mainframe CICS behavior?
6. How long does it take a mainframe COBOL developer to be fully productive in the NeoKicks environment?
7. What happens with the batch jobs that work closely with my online CICS systems?
8. When we make changes to our applications, do we code using the EXEC CICS statements, or in NeoKicks service calls?

BMS Screens

9. What will be the impact on our application users when we migrate to NeoKicks?
10. What kinds of styles can I select for my converted screens?
11. How do we migrate our end-users from character screen emulations to rich graphical interfaces

Data Access

12. Which databases can I use with NeoKicks?
13. Does NeoKicks provide transaction support?

Future

14. How am I able to take advantage of .NET Framework features from my procedural CICS COBOL programs?

General

1. What products are required to support NeoKicks?

Answer: NeoKicks is designed to work with NetCOBOL for .NET and Visual Studio 2005. A suitable version of Visual Studio 2005 for working with COBOL is provided with NetCOBOL for .NET. If you generate the ASP.NET pages (output from the NeoKicks Project Wizard) in C# or Visual Basic, you will need a version of Visual Studio that supports your selected language. Other products may be required depending on your applications' needs. For example, you will need a relational database like SQL Server if your application uses SQL, and you might want to select Btrieve from Pervasive to provide transactional support for your COBOL file I/O.

Migrating CICS Code

2. Are some CICS applications better candidates for legacy modernization than others?

Answer: We recommend that the first application(s) you modernize with NeoKicks should not be too large, should be self-contained and should use standard CICS file I/O or DB2 SQL commands. The choice of such applications allows you to become acquainted with the NeoKicks environment and the best legacy modernization techniques to use, without the distractions of the complexities of migrating large, interrelated systems or dealing with nonstandard database structures. Once you have modernized a smaller, self-contained application, you can then take on bigger and more complex application modernizations.

3. What changes do I need to make to my CICS application code?

Answer: One of the functions of the NeoKicks Project Wizard, the tool that takes your CICS COBOL and BMS macro code and populates a Visual Studio 2005 project, is to convert the EXEC CICS code into calls to NeoKicks services - in much the same way that the CICS preprocessor converts the EXEC CICS code. Consequently there are very few changes you need to make to your CICS code. Changes that may be required are in the areas of CICS statements that are not currently supported, a few IBM COBOL statements that are not supported by NetCOBOL, and changes to logic that assumes EBCDIC collating sequences or character values. Fujitsu Computer Systems and our consulting partners are well versed in these areas and can quickly identify and plan for the needed changes. The end result is a set of applications prepared for a long life in the .NET environment.

4. Are there issues in migrating EBCDIC code to the Unicode .NET environment?

Answer: Yes, though NeoKicks provides support to make the transition easy. Unicode is a multi-byte encoding system and as such can require changes in field and record lengths - a possibly challenging exercise. NeoKicks therefore supports the data in ACP (ANSI Code Page, that we generally think of as "ASCII") format, which is the best match for EBCDIC's single-byte encoding. The NeoKicks system handles the conversions between ACP and Unicode required for interfacing with the .NET Framework.
Data is therefore converted from EBCDIC to the appropriate ACP. Tools are provided with NetCOBOL to assist with this data conversion.
Code also needs to be reviewed for points where its behavior may depend on EBCDIC values such as:
- EBCDIC values hard coded as hexadecimal constants
- Comparisons that assume the EBCDIC collating sequence order
- File I/O that assumes the EBCDIC collating sequence order
Fujitsu has considerable experience in this area and can help you in this CICS migration process.

5. How closely does NeoKicks emulate mainframe CICS behavior?

Answer: The goal for all supported CICS statements is to provide support that gives the same behavior as you would receive using mainframe CICS. Where a mainframe behavior doesn't have a .NET equivalent NeoKicks will warn you at the preprocessing stage and we can usually recommend actions to preserve the integrity of your application logic.

6. How long does it take a mainframe COBOL developer to be fully productive in the NeoKicks environment?

Answer:Provided the developer has some experience with Windows (so that mechanisms such as using a mouse and standard Windows interfaces are familiar) then the learning curve is reasonably short, primarily involving familiarization with the functions of Visual Studio 2005 and NeoKicks' integration into that environment. For those unfamiliar with Windows allow more time for training in and familiarization with the environment and tools.

7. What happens with the batch jobs that work closely with my online CICS systems?

Answer: You migrate them to Windows/.NET using the NeoBatch/NeoSort/NetCOBOL for .NET combination. Because your CICS and batch COBOL programs are operating in the same environment you have the same level of integration you had on the mainframe. You also have the option of configuring things slightly differently so, for example, your data is stored on a database server while your online and batch processes work on separate servers – you determine the configuration that gives you the service characteristics you desire.



8. When we make changes to our applications, do we code using the EXEC CICS statements, or in NeoKicks service calls?

Answer: Updates to your application will generally be made using NeoKicks service calls, unless you choose to maintain a version of your source code that you put through the NeoKicks preprocessor every time you update the code.

BMS Screens

9. What will be the impact on our application users when we migrate to NeoKicks?

Answer: By default the NeoKicks answer to this question is "minimal". The appearance and keystroke handling of the Web or Windows forms generated by NeoKicks from the BMS macros is almost identical to those of mainframe CICS. The main difference is that instead of the screen being displayed in a 3270 emulator window (or on a 3270 terminal) the "screen" (actually a Web page or Windows form) is displayed within an Internet browser window or Windows dialog. The new NeoKicks interfaces are constructed using GUI controls but their style is set up to look like the character screen.
Switching the application platform with negligible impact on your users allows you to focus on the migration and not expending time and energy retraining users. Later you can make the switch in interface style at a time that is convenient for both you and your users, possibly introducing some highly useful interface enhancements at the same time.

10. How can I configure the styles of my converted screens?

11. How do we migrate our end-users from character screen emulations to rich graphical interfaces?

Answer: Any database that works with NetCOBOL for .NET. This can be any ODBC compliant database.

13. Does NeoKicks provide transaction support?

Fujitsu is a registered trademark of Fujitsu Ltd.
NeoKicks is a trademark of Fujitsu Software Corporation.