IBM CICS Performance Analyzer for z/OS V1.4 enhancements support IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS V4.1

IBM United States Software Announcement 206-236
October 3, 2006

 

Table of contents		Document options
At a glance Product positioning Overview Publications Key prerequisites Reference information Description		Printable version

 

At a glance

CICS Performance Analyzer (CICS PA) for z/OS V1.4 can help optimize system and application performance by:

• Providing comprehensive performance reporting for your CICS systems
• Helping tune, manage, and plan CICS systems effectively
• Continuing to add, via the service channel, additional support for IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS V1.4

 
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Overview

CICS^® Performance Analyzer (CICS PA) for z/OS^® produces a wide range of standard or customized reports and extracts on all aspects of CICS Transaction Server (CICS TS) application performance. These reports help tune and manage the performance of CICS systems, as well as plan capacity for future use.

CICS PA for z/OS complements IBM Tivoli^® OMEGAMON^® XE for CICS on z/OS for extensive CICS performance analysis and understanding of usage trends. It helps to identify and eliminate trends leading to online performance problems.

CICS PA and OMEGAMON XE for CICS together play an important role in day-to-day (OMEGAMON XE for CICS) and long-term (CICS PA) performance management strategy, and they are critical to meeting service-level agreements in IT governance.

IBM will deliver, via the service channel, further integration between OMEGAMON XE for CICS and CICS PA by supporting additional, OMEGAMON-recorded data from the CICS SMF 110 performance records. For example, CICS PA will be enhanced to support the OMEGAMON XE for CICS user fields that can be added by OMEGAMON into the CICS Monitoring Facility (CMF) performance (SMF 110) records.

Since the general availability of CICS PA for z/OS V1.4 in March 2005, other enhancements delivered via the service channel are:

• Precision added to Historical database (HDB) Extract panel
• Ability to load HDB and export to DB2^® in a single job
• Shared System Definition enhancements
• z/OS V1.7 System Logger enhancement
• CICS PA V1.4 publications update

In addition, SupportPac™, CP12 — CICS PA for z/OS Historical Database Reporting has also been created to explain how to transfer data from CICS PA into a DB2 table or comma separated value (CSV) file and to show how to create reports and charts.
 
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Key prerequisites

CICS PA runs on:

• CICS TS for z/OS V2.2, or later
• z/OS V1.4, or later

To exploit IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON data, IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS V4.1 is required.
 
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Description

CICS PA analyzes the System Management Facilities (SMF) records created by the CMF, CICS Statistics, CICS Server Statistics, and related subsystems (including DB2 and WebSphere^® MQ) to produce a wide range of reports and extracts that will help tune and manage your CICS systems. CICS PA also provides z/OS system logger reports using the system logger data (SMF 88 records).

CICS PA reports on all aspects of your CICS system activity and resource usage. You can use the CICS PA Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF) dialog to generate your report and extract requests. It assists you in building the reports and extracts specific to your requirements without you having to understand the complexity of the CMF data, CICS Statistics and CICS Server Statistics data, and the DB2 Accounting and WebSphere MQ Accounting data.

CICS PA reports and data extracts analyze many aspects of your CICS systems, including:

• CICS application performance
• CICS system resource usage
• Cross-System performance, including MRO, ISC and DB2 Subsystems
• Transaction Resource Usage
• File and Tsqueue resource usage
• External Subsystems used by your CICS applications, including WebSphere MQ, DB2 and IMS™ (DBCTL)
• MVS™ Workload Manager (WLM)
• CICS Business Transaction Services (BTS)
• Transaction Groups, for example, CICS Web Support, ECI over TC/IP Internet Inter-Orb Protocol

The flexibility of CICS PA allows you to easily tailor your report and extract requests to meet your specific performance reporting and analysis requirements. CICS PA allows you to keep pace with the ever-changing nature of CICS by providing a flexible and easy-to-use dialog that lets you report on all aspects of your CICS system's performance.

Additional capabilities of CICS PA include:

• HDB facility which provides a flexible and easy-to-use facility for managing and reporting historical performance and statistics data for your CICS systems
• Online Statistics Reporting
• Facility to optionally extract performance and statistics history data into comma-separated-variable (CSV) format data sets for off-line analysis

New enhancements to CICS PA V1.4 will be added through the service channel.

For example, support for OMEGAMON CMF performance (SMF110) MCT User fields (PTF for APAR PK30209) will be implemented.

CICS PA will be enhanced to support the OMEGAMON XE for CICS user fields that can be added by OMEGAMON into the CMF performance (SMF 110) records.

The CICS PA Performance List and Summary Report will be enhanced to include a new field category to support the OMEGAMON version, warnings, User Work area, CA-IDMS, Adabas, CA-DATACOM, and Supra requests and user event fields. This will provide enhanced performance reporting for customer applications using these OMEGAMON functions and database products. These fields will include the following data:

• Resource limiting (RLIM) warnings received for DB2, DLI, VSAM, Adabas, IDMS, or DATACOM or Supra
• RLIM warnings received for CPU TIME, ELAPSED TIME, DSA, EDSA, EXEC CALLS, or User Events

CICS PA V1.4 enhancements already available through the service channel

The following PTFs delivered important functional enhancements, implemented in response to customer requirements, and to improve ease of use. The key enhancements are as follows:

• Precision option added to the HDB Extract Panel (APAR PK03641).
• Enhanced HDB export to DB2 (PTF UK10167 for APAR PK14621): These enhancements provide an easier method to automate the exporting of CICS performance and statistics data to DB2 after loading a CICS PA HDB.

  The CICS PA DB2 settings can now be more easily defined from CICS PA Profile Options Menu and a new option is also provided to override an HDB Load from an SMF data set that has already been successfully loaded.

• Enhanced Shared System Definitions (PTF UK14107 for APAR PK10771): The CICS PA shared system definitions function introduced in V1.4 has been significantly updated as a result of early customer feedback. These enhancements include:
  • Take-up facility from personal system definitions to shared system definitions, to include the file definitions.
  • A facility to define a cyclical SMF file with no origin and also use symbolic variables to represent date values in the data set names of cyclic SMF files. Daily SMF data sets now expire only when no longer cataloged, rather than based on the date of their SMF records.
  • The ability is provided to exclude cyclic SMF file definitions from being used in CICS PA report requests is also provided.
• z/OS V1.7 System Logger enhancement (PTF UK14134 for APAR PK22931). This new field SMF88EAF, added to System Logger SMF type 88 records in z/OS V1.7, now appears in the System Logger reports under the column heading "Staging DS Async Buf Full."

In addition a SupportPac CP12 — CICS PA has been created which explains how to transfer data from CICS PA into a DB2 table or comma separated value (CSV) file. It shows how to create reports and charts. Specifically, this document shows you how to use CICS PA to:

• Load CICS statistics or performance data from an z/OS SMF data set into a CICS PA HDB.
• Export data from an HDB to DB2 tables or a CSV file.

Example scenarios are included and serve two purposes. First, they create reports or charts that help answer common CICS performance-related questions. Second, they demonstrate different tools and techniques.

Accessibility by people with disabilities

Features of CICS PA that support use by people with disabilities include:

• Ability to use assistive technologies such as screen readers and screen magnifier software
• Facilities to customize display attributes such as color, contrast, and font size
• Capability of operating using only the keyboard

The product documentation includes a User's Guide and Report Reference. These are available in softcopy (PDF) format. They are also available (in HTML format) as part of the accessible CICS TS V3.1 Information Center.

Users with limited vision who work with screen reader software might find the following require particular attention:

• Performance Graph Reports
  • These reports are composed of character output. Screen readers can report all of these to you but they are unlikely to convey the overall impression of the graph.
  • All the data used to produce Performance Graph Reports is available from CMF performance class data. You might find it more helpful to work with, for example, the Performance Summary reports or the Performance Export Extract.
• Pop-up windows — CICS PA uses the ISPF function that produces pop-up windows for some tasks. The pop-up and its frame are just the text that overlays the underlying information of the displayed panel. The frame of such a pop-up is not usually recognized as such by screen reader software, so you may need to gain some familiarity with reading such panels before information becomes meaningful.

A version of the product documentation, that is more suitable for use with screen reader software, can be made available on request.

A U.S. Section 508 Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) containing details on the products accessibility compliance can be requested via the IBM Web site

http://www-3.ibm.com/able/product_accessibility/index.html

Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act

CICS PA for z/OS V1.4 is capable, when used in accordance with associated IBM documentation, of satisfying the applicable requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, provided that any assistive technology used with the product properly interoperates with it.
 
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Product positioning

In an increasingly complex and competitive business environment, managers, system programmers, application developers and performance specialists come under pressure to operate their systems at peak level. Adoption of on demand business strategies leads to more complex CICS business-critical applications, increasing the risk of missing Service Level commitments. CICS customers need tools to help them reduce downtime, and plan for the future, while keeping systems-management costs down.

IBM offers a comprehensive solution for CICS performance management, which meets requirements of everyone involved in CICS performance measurement, monitoring, analysis, and planning.

CICS PA is an off-line reporting tool that complements OMEGAMON XE for CICS to help our customers with the tasks of ongoing CICS performance reporting, trend analysis, tuning, and capacity planning.

Benefits of CICS PA

• Improves tuning and capacity planning analysis
• Helps take proactive approach to CICS systems tuning
• Provides detailed performance bottleneck analysis
• Uncovers trends leading to poor CICS performance or even outages
• Helps plan capacity for optimal performance
• Helps review application performance and identify potential to improve application design
• Complements the on-line monitors with in depth analysis vital for fast problem resolution

CICS PA also complements the enterprise-wide historical performance capabilities of IBM Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS with the additional deep and detailed CICS-related performance data, which can be used for focused CICS performance problem determination, bottleneck analysis, tuning and capacity planning. For a complete solution, CICS PA can complement Application Performance Analyzer, which is used to step through the application code and fix the root cause of the performance problem within the application.

CICS PA is a part of the System z™ tools portfolio supporting the CICS environment, which can help to support application transformation and CICS technology-based SOA implementations, reduce complexity and cost of CICS system and application management, improve CICS application and data availability, and comply with regulations like the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act., and enable easier CICS version-to-version upgrades (especially to CICS TS V3.1.).
 
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Publications

CICS PA documentation and Redbook information

• CICS Performance Analyzer for z/OS V1.4 — User's Guide (SC34-6307)
• CICS Performance Analyzer for z/OS V1.4 — Report Reference (SC34-6308)
• CICS Performance Analyzer for z/OS V1.4 — Program Directory (GI10-2570)
• Redbook: CICS Performance Analyzer (SG24-6063), visit
  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246063.html
• Redbook: Migration Considerations for CICS using CICS CM, PA & IA (SG24-7294), visit
  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247294.html

Where applicable, the books have been updated for the new function. These books are available in PDF format for download. However, the Program Directory is delivered in hardcopy with the product.

In addition, the system logger Redbook and the supporting Redpaper discuss and show the use of CICS PA. These are:

• Systems Programmer's Guide to z/OS System Logger (SG24-6898), visit
  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246898.html
• Performance Considerations and Measurements for CICS and System Logger (REDP-3768), visit
  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp3768.html

 
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Reference information

For the original announcement of CICS PA for z/OS V1.4, refer to Software Announcement 205-040 , dated February 22, 2005.

For CICS SupportPacs, visit

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview/wss?rs=1083&uid=swg27007241

Trademarks

 

SupportPac, IMS, MVS, System z, and Redbooks are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other countries or both.

 

CICS, z/OS, Tivoli, OMEGAMON, DB2, and WebSphere are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other countries or both.

 

Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.