Administration of the CICS Feature › Overview › Alert Management

Alert Management

In CICS there are hundreds of transactions but not all of these transactions need performance monitoring. Many transactions, even though they might be high consumers, only execute occasionally and do not warrant concern.

Each time the CICS Feature executes, important top consuming transactions can be automatically identified and alerted. This feature works in two steps:

1. The top number of consuming transactions are identified based on the scope you define as a parameter, for example, TOP Scope = 10.
2. Within this TOP Scope, the current execution consumption values of the transactions are compared to the statistical information maintained for the same transactions on the database. If the actual consumption exceeds the statistical limits, an alert is issued automatically. This alert is referred to as a statistical alert.

   Additionally, the user can manually issue an alert explicitly for transactions by using the online Alert Management option. This alert is referred to as a user alert.

The alert management option provides all the information necessary to respond to the alert. Information is provided in the form of state and reason codes that identify the situation. For details about how to review and interpret alerts online, refer to the User Guide that corresponds with your measurement tool.

All alerted transactions are also listed in the APCSALT report file of job APCYJLNA. (For details regarding this job, see Jobs APCYJLST and APCYJLNA - process CA MAT measurement. Listed for each alert transaction is the average of CPU time, the current CPU time, the number of relevant history entries of the current transaction, and the resulting standard deviation in CPU time. Depending on the parameter setting for online alerting, these CPU times either are in percent as in previous releases or are the transactions' absolute CPU time. Using the APCSALT report file, user-written REXX procedures can use the keyword parameters to process the alert information, such as, pass information to change management or provide programmer notification of alerts. The following example shows an the APCSALT report file output for a runaway based on CPU time percent.

$$ALERT                                                                   
$SS=CICS                               SUBSYSTEM ( CICS / IMS )           
$SN=PNP1                               SYSTEM NAME                        

$CM=00627                              MEASURED CPU TIME %                
$CA=00022                              AVERAGE CPU TIME %                 
$AT=005                                ALERT TEXT WITH NNN LINES          

           -------------------------------------------------------------  
           TRANSACTION : OKSS       SYSTEM : PNP1       PGM : CIC1PNP1    
           CPU%  MEAS  :   6.27   AVERAGE :    .22   STD.DEV :    .24     
           -------------------------------------------------------------  
$$ALEND

The following example shows the APCSALT report file output for a runaway based on the transaction's absolute CPU time.

$$ALERT                                                                      
$SS=CICS                               SUBSYSTEM ( CICS / IMS )              
$SN=CICS0001                           SYSTEM NAME                           
$TX=ED03                               TRANSACTION NAME                      
$CM=00011295                           MEASURED ABS CPU TIME PER TX          
$CA=00782                              AVERAGE ABS CPU TIME PER TX           
$AT=005                                ALERT TEXT WITH NNN LINES             
2010-03-01 PMA ALERT ID 00001    BY STAT                                     
           -------------------------------------------------------------     
           TRANSACTION : ED03      SYSTEM : CICS0001     PGM : CIC1PCK1      
           CPU ABS MEAS:   1.1295 AVERAGE :   0.0782  STD.DEV:   0.0679      
           -------------------------------------------------------------    
$$ALERT                                                                   
$SS=CICS                               SUBSYSTEM ( CICS / IMS )           
$SN=PNP1                               SYSTEM NAME                        
$TX=OKSS                               TRANSACTION NAME                   
$CM=00627                              MEASURED CPU TIME %                
$CA=00022                              AVERAGE CPU TIME %                 
$AT=005                                ALERT TEXT WITH NNN LINES          
2010-01-09 PMA ALERT ID 16187    BY STAT                                  
           -------------------------------------------------------------  
           TRANSACTION : OKSS       SYSTEM : PNP1       PGM : CIC1PNP1    
           CPU%  MEAS  :   6.27   AVERAGE :    .22   STD.DEV :    .24     
           -------------------------------------------------------------  
$$ALEND