4. EXCEPTIONS › 4.1 Exception Process Overview

4.1 Exception Process Overview

The CA MICS exception process consists of the exceptions
themselves, a set of standard reports, CA MICS Information
Center Facility (MICF) inquiries, an exception test routine,
and an exception value analysis routine.  Each of these is
described below.

EXCEPTIONS

An exception is any condition that deviates from the expected
norm, or any missed objective in system performance or
service.  It may be a distinct problem (e.g., CICS abended at
2:00 p.m.), a potential problem that requires further
research (e.g., a TSO user overloaded the system from 1:00 to
1:30 p.m.), or it may represent a standard, security, or
audit violation (e.g., user XYZ is not authorized to use
PDZAP and was detected using it seven times yesterday).

Because the volume of exception occurrences can be quite
large, CA MICS provides a means to categorize, aggregate,
consolidate, and prioritize them to meet your needs.  Each
exception has:

  o  An Exception Number for unique definition

  o  A Severity Level to signify degree of importance

  o  A Management Area to identify area of responsibility


STANDARD REPORTS

The standard exception reports provide a concise, integrated
method for reporting problems.  The following reports can be
produced as part of the CA MICS DAILY job:

  o  Exception Management Overview Report

  o  Severity Level Exception Summary Report

  o  Management Area Exception Summary Report

You control which reports are produced via the REPORT
EXCEPTIONS statement in prefix.MICS.PARMS(EXECDEF).  Refer to
Section 2.3.5 of the PIOM for more information.

Two additional standard reports can be produced, as required,
to provide the necessary background detail to effectively
analyze reported exceptions.  The two reports are:

  o  Full Exception Detail Report

  o  Short Exception Detail Report


MICF INQUIRIES

The catalog group EXCEPT, that is shipped with CA MICS,
contains a number of standard MICF inquiries that can be used
to report exception conditions.  In the following inquiry
list, graphic reports whose value of 'x' is 'C', produce
color graphic reports using SAS/GRAPH.  If the value of 'x'
is 'P', printer graphic reports are produced without using
SAS/GRAPH.

  o  BASxM1 - Monthly Exception Summary Report
  o  BASxM2 - Monthly Mgmt.  Area Exception Summary Report
  o  BASxM3 - Monthly Info.  Area Exception Summary Report
  o  BASxM4 - Monthly Exception Management Overview Report
  o  BASxM5 - Monthly Info.  Area Exception Overview Report
  o  BASxW1 - Weekly Exception Summary Report
  o  BASxW2 - Weekly Mgmt.  Area Exception Summary Report
  o  BASxW3 - Weekly Info.  Area Exception Summary Report

The following inquiries that produce printed reports are also
available:

  o  BASLD2 - Daily Severity Level Exception Summary Report
  o  BASLD3 - Daily Management Area Exception Summary Report
  o  BASLD4 - Daily Short Exception Detail Report
  o  BASLD5 - Daily Full Exception Detail Report
  o  BASLD6 - Daily Exception Ranking Report
  o  BASLM6 - Monthly Exception Ranking Report

These standard inquiries have an execution-time parameter
selection that permits you to report on a subset of the
exceptions.  For example, inquiry BASLD5 allows selection on
SYSID, Information Area, Management Area, Severity Level, and
other criteria.


EXCEPTION TEST ROUTINE

Each Analyzer has an exception test routine that is invoked
in the DAY200 step of the CA MICS DAILY job. You control
which routines are invoked using the CREATE EXCEPTIONFILES
statement in prefix.MICS.PARMS(EXECDEF).  Refer to the
PIOM, Section 2.3.5, for more information on EXECDEF.

An exception test routine, written in the SAS language,
defines the exception and tests to determine whether or not
the exception condition is present in the data being
processed.  The distributed exception test routine for each
Analyzer is contained in sharedprefix.MICS.SOURCE(DYcccEXC)
where ccc is the Analyzer identifier.  When the DAY200 step
invokes the test routine, it does so by %INCLUDEing the
DYcccEXC member from prefix.MICS.USER.SOURCE.  As
distributed, that member then %INCLUDEs the member from
sharedprefix.MICS.SOURCE.  See Section 4.2 of this guide,
Setting Exception Values, for more information on DYIMSEXC.


EXCEPTION VALUE ANALYSIS ROUTINE

Each Analyzer has an exception value analysis (EVA) routine
that can be used to help determine values for the exception
conditions.  The EVA routine extracts information from the
CA MICS database. Descriptive statistics for the values of
variables used in exception tests are printed in the
Exception Value Analysis Report.  The EVA routine for each
Analyzer is stored in sharedprefix.MICS.SOURCE(cccEVA).  The
job control to execute the EVA process is contained in
prefix.MICS.CNTL(cccEVA).