8. WORKSHEET FACILITY › 8.4 Forecasting Technique Tutorial

8.4 Forecasting Technique Tutorial

The Worksheet Facility provides a method of generating
documents that can be used as part of the overall information
gathering process that leads to the creation of the Capacity
Plan. Used in conjunction with the other forecasting
facilities of the Capacity Planner, worksheets provide
additional insight into the plans of your users and assist in
understanding how workloads behave on your systems.

The Worksheet Forecasting process follows a series of steps
described as follows:

o Step one, Worksheet Creation, involves the defining a
  worksheet based upon a file you choose in the CA MICS
  Capacity Planning database. This file could be a resource
  element file, a standard application file, a meta file, or
  a business element file. Once you have selected a file for
  input, you can choose the data elements you would like to
  appear on the report.  You can specify any instructions you
  would like to appear on the report and build subsetting
  logic if desired.

o Step two involves producing (executing) a worksheet.
  Production of the worksheet generates the Worksheet Report
  (see Figure 8-1) and creates/updates a member in the
  CA MICS Capacity Planner data set that contains the data
  you selected (see step four).

o Step three takes place outside the CA MICS Capacity Planner
  and involves filling in the worksheets with the information
  you desire. This process can be done by yourself, through
  user interviews, or by directly distributing the worksheets
  to your users. Once the worksheets are completed, you can
  proceed to step four.

o Step four involves using the ENTER function of the
  Worksheet Facility to enter the values from a filled in
  worksheet into the Capacity Planning data set. Once
  entered, you can proceed to step five.

o Once the values have been entered into the Capacity
  Planning Data Set, you need to APPLY this information to
  the Capacity Planner database file you specified in the
  step one. The APPLY function is part of the Worksheet
  Facility and invokes SAS to take the information in the
  Capacity Planner Data Set and create the Capacity Planner
  Worksheet Forecast File (see Chapter 3 for more information
  on the format of the Capacity Planner database).

o After the worksheet information has been applied, you can
  see the effect of your worksheet through the creation and
  execution of a Worksheet Effect Report.  The Effect Report
  is similar in layout and creation to the worksheet itself,
  however, you will use the Capacity Planning Analysis option
  of the Capacity Planner to create/modify a Worksheet Effect
  Report.  This new report is option 7 on the Workload
  Forecasting main menu.