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This chapter describes guidelines for the interpretation and
application of the data made available by the CA MICS
Analyzer Option for CICS. It presents an overview of the
scope and general areas of applications of the CA MICS
Analyzer Option for CICS and a discussion of CICS data source
concepts and terminology as they relate to the available data
in the CA MICS database.
In addition, this chapter describes the interfaces between
the CA MICS Analyzer Option for CICS and other CA MICS
components.
About CICS
CICS is a major data-communication software system from IBM.
As such, it provides an online information processing system,
using terminals that can directly access data sets and
databases. Its major functions provide communication
interfaces among remote and local terminals and subsystems,
concurrent processing of multiple online users, file servers
that interface with IMS and DB2 database management systems,
and the ability to communicate with other CICS and database
systems, both within the same computer and across computers.
CICS provides its own facility, known as the CICS Monitoring
Facility (CMF), to capture performance-related data during
online processing for later batch analysis. CMF data is one
of the data sources supported by the CA MICS Analyzer Option
for CICS. In addition, third-party vendors have provided
their own CICS monitors, which produce data that is also
supported by the CA MICS Analyzer Option for CICS. One is
ASG-TMON.
These CICS monitors capture detailed information at the
transaction level so you can analyze the type of service CICS
is providing its users. In addition, they capture system-
wide information to provide an overall picture of CICS
resource consumption and system performance. The CA MICS
Analyzer Option for CICS provides you with the tool to
analyze this vital information, which is used to assess the
productivity and satisfaction of your CICS users and to
monitor the effective use of your hardware resources.
About the CA MICS Analyzer Option for CICS
The CA MICS Analyzer Option for CICS helps you manage your
CICS environment by:
o Providing a common database to support the various
CICS monitors.
o Integrating system level data with transaction data in
a common file to show total CICS activity.
o Supplementing the CICS monitor data with derived and
user-defined workload characterization data to
increase usability of the data sources.
o Producing management reports and summary reports to
monitor various aspects of CICS performance, such as
system throughput and resource usage.
o Providing exception analysis using CA MICS exception
monitoring and reporting to alert you to problem
conditions.
o Providing history data for monitoring performance
trends and planning for future growth.
Three broad categories of data are produced by the CA MICS
Analyzer Option for CICS:
o Workload and utilization data
o Response/system performance data
o Exception data
Workload and utilization data consists of transaction
counts, CPU usage, file access, message counts, storage
usage, calls to various CICS facilities such as journal
control and temporary storage, and so on. The CA MICS
Analyzer Option for CICS summarizes this information based
on characterization keys that you define when the product is
installed. The summarized information enables you to
monitor, on a regular basis, the workload generated by a
specific "user," such as a department, a terminal user, or
an application. In addition, the CA MICS Analyzer Option
for CICS provides historical data to help you identify
workload trends and estimate future growth.
CICS response-time data provides the key indication of CICS
performance. Ideally, this data should represent end-user
response time, which measures from the time the terminal
user presses the Enter key to the time CICS displays the
response on the screen and unlocks the terminal keyboard.
However, none of the CICS monitors supported by CA MICS
provides end-user response time. As a result, the
response-time measures produced by the CA MICS Analyzer
Option for CICS represent the internal or host response
time, which is calculated based on transaction start and end
timestamps. The CA MICS Analyzer Option for CICS also
calculates average response times for each type of
transaction, including short, medium, long, and
conversational. In addition, it produces response
distributions by transaction type to show the percentage of
transactions that completed within each of the response
limits that you specify.
The system performance data identifies problem conditions
that may degrade CICS performance, such as short-on-storage
(SOS) conditions, frequent program compressions, maximum
tasks conditions, and storage accounting area (SAA) errors.
By monitoring this information on a regular basis, you can
identify CICS system performance issues and address them
accordingly.
Exception data alerts you to abnormal conditions and events
that exceed site-specified limits, for example, transaction
abends and excessive paging rates. This data enables you to
quickly identify problem areas that need to be addressed.
This section contains the following topics:
2.4 Accounting and Chargeback Interface
2.5 Capacity Planner Interface
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