Technical detail
Enterprise Management for CICS® Transaction Server (CICS TS) enables effective management of large runtime configurations via modern user interfaces, so that demanding service level objectives can be met. This release continues the emphasis in systems management for integration, simplification, monitoring and automation.
CICSPlex System Manager is an integral part of CICS TS. Its role is to reduce the complexity of operating multiple CICS regions by providing access to all major CICS management functions of resource definition, operation, monitoring, real time analysis, workload management as well as services at the business application level, through an easy to use Web User Interface (WUI). Access is provided from a single point of control where resources can be manipulated irrespective of their physical location. A comprehensive API is also provided to enable automation and scripting of system management tasks. It also cooperates with the Tivoli suite of products to meet the needs of end-to-end application management and automation of the CICS workload on z/OS™.
CICS Transaction Server for z/OS Version 3 Release 1 provides support for all management tasks associated with CICS resources, using the CICSPlex SM WUI. You can either use the menus and views provided, or customise them to suite your specific needs. Various extensions to its function have also been made as a result of extensive customer input. You can maintain resource definitions using the BATCHREP utility enables resource definitions from a job step whose execution you can control from the WUI view.
To simplify the user interface dynamic selection lists have been added, where clicking on an icon opens the selection list. Usability has been improved in this release with the inclusion of filter confirmation which allows you to specify a filter before retrieving the data for a particular view. CICSPlex SM will then issue a warning if the request would result in more data than expected and provides the opportunity to alter filters or cancel the request before execution. CICSPlex SM now simplifies the way you maintain user profiles by allowing you to group users like operators, system programmers or application developers and maintaining a common profile for these groups, including default context and scope, initial URL and warning counts. A mechanism has been provided for you to select your favourite views so that you can focus on the subset of views applicable to you as a CICSPlex SM user. The screen design has been enhanced to ensure a great improvement in usability and to meet many of the customer requirements in this area.
The Business Application Services (BAS) administration views have been restructured to improve their usability. They have been divided into two groups: basic BAS, which emulates RDO and advanced BAS, which exploits the advanced features of CICSPlex SM.
CICSPlex SM delivers a modern user interface, providing your system management needs for CICS. It is now possible to completely configure CICSPlex SM using this interface. Establishing a CICSPlex SM environment in this configuration significantly reduces the time to exploitation of new functions and reduces the complexity of migration.
In addition to the enterprise management technologies offered by CICS Transaction Server, IBM provides a set of performance management tools for CICS to enable on-line monitoring and problem determination and off-line analysis.
IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON® for CICS® is designed to help you proactively manage your CICS systems. With a flexible easy-to-use browser interface, IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS helps you clearly see and understand application and system events. You can monitor and manage CICS transactions at the big picture and granular levels, as well as interaction with other applications, within a single interface. IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS is designed to enable you to detect problems quickly and take action in real time to speed problem resolution.
CICS Performance Monitor for z/OS builds on the capabilities of CICSPlex System Manager and provides a comprehensive and easy to use graphical interface for exception management and historical task data collection. CICS Performance Monitor also provides access to detailed performance management data, presented in a format specifically tailored to fast on-line problem investigation and the ability to rapidly take necessary actions to prevent downtime. This data is collected by the underlying CICSPlex SM mechanisms.
These two products will be converged in the future to provide a single IBM online monitoring function for CICS.
CICS Performance Analyzer for z/OS complements CICS Performance Monitor and Tivoli Omegamon for CICS, providing comprehensive performance reporting and historical database capabilities to help you analyze every aspect of your CICS system performance for tuning, capacity planning and reporting purposes. For more information on the above performance management tools or other CICS tools please go to CICS Tools
