CICS had its beginnings in the late 1960s when it was first called the Public Utilities Customer Information Control System (PUCICS). That didn't last long because with CICS' introduction in 1969 as a fee-based Program Product it was then simply called CICS. That didn't last long either because in 1971 the DOS-based CICS products came in being. The DOS of 1971, by the way, was not the DOS that came into being in the 1980s with personal computers, but rather it was the Disk Operating System, a predecessor of today's VSE operating system.
The initial support of CICS for the DOS environment came in two flavors; CICS/DOS Entry (or CICS/DOSE) for the very small systems and CICS/DOS Standard (of CICS/DOSS) for larger systems. Given these names, the CICS product for MVT became known as CICS OS Standard (or CICS/OS).
The 1970s introduced virtual storage systems and CICS adapted its products to the new environment. Generically, all were then referred to as the CICS/VS family of products. Specifically, CICS for the OS environment became CICS/OS/VS (dropping the Standard) designation) and the two CICS products for DOS (DOSE and DOSS) were merged into one product called CICS/DOS/VS. CICS/DOS/VS later changed its name to CICS/VSE when it became more integrated with the VSE operating system.
When CICS for MVS evolved from its CICS/OS/VS Version 1 days, the Version 2 product was known as CICS/MVS. The OS product then evolved into the CICS/ESA product, taking its name from the operating system, MVS/ESA. In the 1990's the term "transaction server" became popular and this showed up in a number of CICS products.
The follow-on to CICS/ESA (Versions 3 and 4) was introduced as the CICS Transaction Server, first for OS/390 and then later for z/OS. The product was often referred to as simply CICS TS.
CICS for AIX and then later a number of other UNIX-based platforms went through a number of name changes. Initially, the first of the UNIX-based products was called CICS/6000 or more fully, CICS for the RISC System/6000. It was most often referred to as simply CICS/6000. This was true even after the official name of the product was changed to CICS for AIX and then the CICS Transaction Server for AIX. Ah, what's in a name? It didn't stop there, because after the other CICS UNIX variants came into being, they were all packaged under the name TXSeries.
The CICS/400 product didn't go through many name changes but what confused most people was the first release was numbered Version 2 Release 2. The reason for this odd numbering was that the IBM people in charge of the AS/400 and its software products wanted all components to have the same version and release number as the operating system (OS/400).
CICS for the OS/2 platform went through some name changes but the most common mis-identification for the product came when people could not break their habit of calling CICS products by their suffix - for instance CICS/VS, CICS/MVS, CICS/ESA, etc. All too often the OS/2 product was referred to as CICS/OS2 when in fact the proper name for the product was CICS OS/2. That changed to the CICS Transaction Server for OS/2 but most people seemed to agree on calling it CICS OS/2.
What's in a name? In spite of all the different names, CICS is still referred to as CICS. Or is it KICKS? The story there is that early in CICS' life, Americans had a tendency to refer to the product by its letters "C-I-C-S". It was the Europeans (primarily the British) that seemed to favor calling the product by its phonetic name "KICKS". Today, both references are common and acceptable.
Copyright © 2004 - Yelavich Consulting, Sparks, NV
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