3. CAPACITY PLANNING DATABASE › 3.4 Meta Files › 3.4.1 Usage Guidelines

3.4.1 Usage Guidelines

 
Meta files hold subsets of CA MICS Capacity Planner data
element values at either the DAYS, WEEKS or MONTHS timespan.
You select the data elements for your meta file.  Like
business element files, there can be any number of meta
files.  A three-character user-supplied name identifies each
of the meta file definitions.

The structure and format of the meta files is the same as
that found for resource element files (refer to Section 3.3.1
for a full discussion), however, there is one major
difference between a resource element file and a meta file.
Meta files can be chained together so that the output of one
meta file update can be used as input to another meta file.
With this, the user can create summarized files that only
depend on one extract from the CA MICS database. A brief
example will illustrate this summarization feature (see the
meta file case studies for a more complete example):
 
    Given a capacity planner file based on the Workload
    Standard Application and the Workload Mapping
    Definition has a one-to-one mapping between the
    performance group number and the CAPAPU value. The
    resulting capacity planner file has one observation for
    each unique performance group in CA MICS. If there was a
    need to see this information summarized at the workgroup
    level (say a group of performance groups) and also
    summarized for the entire system, two meta files would
    address this need.  Before the introduction of the Meta
    File facility, the user would have had to create two more
    standard application files with the necessary Mapping
    definitions to provide the desired summarization.

    By using the Meta File facility, the user could create a
    meta file with a CAPAPU that corresponded to the
    workgroup level and then create another meta file that
    used the previous file as input and summarized up to the
    SYSID level. Graphically this looks like this:
 
               +-------------+
               |Workload S.A.|  CAPAPU = PERFGRP (PGA)
               +-------------+
                      |
                      v
               +-------------+
               |Meta File One|  CAPAPU = WORKGROUP
               +-------------+
                      |
                      v
               +-------------+
               |Meta File Two|  No CAPAPU (SYSID)
               +-------------+