1. OVERVIEW › 1.5 Online Facility Tutorial › 1.5.1 Introduction to the Online Facility › 1.5.1.1 Overview of the Online Facility

1.5.1.1 Overview of the Online Facility

The online facility provides a convenient way to use the
CA MICS Capacity Planner to rapidly obtain the results you
need.  With the online facility, you do not need an in-depth
knowledge of CA MICS or SAS to effectively use the CA MICS
Capacity Planner for building, maintaining, and analyzing
capacity planning database files.  The online facility's
automatic validation procedures prevent you from making
invalid requests, such as trying to use data elements not
contained in the CA MICS files to build your capacity
planning resource element files.  Automatic validation also
prevents syntax errors during subsequent analysis of capacity
planning database files.

Following MICF's format, the online facility allows you to
produce programs called file definition inquiries and
analysis inquiries.  You can design these inquiries either to
collect capacity planning data, or to analyze that data and
produce tabular and graphics reports.

The CA MICS Capacity Planner includes a number of standard
capacity planning applications that you will find immediately
useful through the online facility.  You can easily generate
file definition inquiries based on these standard
applications and save them in your private MICF catalog,
possibly further tailoring them to your particular
requirements if necessary.  Once a file definition inquiry
has been created, it can be saved and reused simply by
selecting it from the MICF catalog.

Online screens are provided for each of the data gathering,
analytical, and reporting features of the CA MICS Capacity
Planner.  These screens and the chapters in this guide that
discuss them will lead you through the use of each of these
features.

A comprehensive, interactive tutorial facility assists you in
learning and using the online facility.  In addition, you
have online access to all of the CA MICS documentation while
you are using the online facility.

The following steps briefly describe how the online facility
works:

o  The input, selection criteria, analysis, and report
   options are defined.

o  Transparent to you, the online facility dynamically builds
   the file definition inquiry or analysis inquiry program
   from your specifications.

o  The inquiry is executed interactively or in batch, and the
   results either create or update a capacity planning file,
   or perform an analysis upon the data in your capacity
   planning database files.  The reports and diagnostic
   output produced during the inquiry execution are displayed
   at your terminal or routed to a printer.