What is real-time analysis?

CICSPlex® SM’s real-time analysis (RTA) function provides automatic, external, notification of conditions in which you have expressed an interest.

Real-time analysis is not concerned solely with commonly recognized error conditions: you can ask to be notified about any aspect of a resource’s status.

For example, if you tell CICSPlex SM that all files used by CICS® systems AORPAY1 must be in ENABLED status, CICSPlex SM sends out warning messages when the status of any of those files is other than ENABLED. However, CICSPlex SM isn’t restricted to telling you about a problem only after it has occurred. CICSPlex SM’s real strength lies in its ability to detect potential problems with CICS resources. Indeed, CICSPlex SM is unrivaled in its ability to detect and warn of the slightest change in the status of a CICS resource. For example, CICSPlex SM can tell you that resource contention is growing, or that the dynamic storage area (DSA) free space is falling, or that the number of users of a particular transaction is high: these can all be indicators of future problems that you could avoid by taking preventive action.

The notification can take the form of a console message, or of a generic alert to NetView®, or both. The CICSPlex SM application programming interface (API) makes it possible for automation products actively to gather status information from CICSPlex SM, rather than waiting for CICSPlex SM to send out MVS™ messages and SNA generic alerts.

Why automate?

The CICSPlex SM operator can monitor RTA messages and take appropriate action. For example, the CICSPlex SM operator can change the status of a file from DISABLED to ENABLED using the CICSPlex SM FILED view. However, this approach is becoming less satisfactory as CICS availability and performance requirements grow. Most enterprises are using more and more CICS systems, often via cloning, to process a growing workload. This factor alone has made the CICSPlex SM operator’s task more difficult and error prone. At the same time, however, service-level agreements are setting performance and availability targets that are more demanding than ever before. Consequently, the ideal environment is one in which the CICSPlex SM operator is presented with problems only in the most exceptional circumstances. Such an environment is now possible, because most actual and potential problems detected by CICSPlex SM can be corrected or prevented by intelligent use of automation products, such as:

The RTA external notifications

An RTA external notification is generated when the status of a CICS resource is not as expected. The notification can take the form of either an external message or an SNA generic alert, or both.

External messages

External messages are MVS/ESA operator messages that are written to the MVS console by default. External messages can also be viewed from the CICSPlex SM EVENT view while a condition is active. When a condition has been resolved, it disappears from the EVENT view. (However, external messages written to the EVENT view are also written to the CICSPlex SM EYULOG to provide a record of the contents of the EVENT view.) In the EVENT view, external messages are sorted in order of urgency, with the message about the most urgent condition at the top of the list. The urgency of a condition is user-defined.

External messages are issued in pairs: one message is issued at the start of a condition, and another is issued when the condition ends. The messages, which all have the prefix "EYUPN", are described in CICSPlex System Manager Messages and Codes External messages can be intercepted by automation products, such as NetView, AOC/MVS, and AOC/MVS CICS Automation.

SNA generic alerts

CICSPlex SM can construct SNA generic alerts and transmit them, via the NetView program-to-program interface (PPI), to NetView for processing. NetView can trap SNA generic alerts in its automation table, which can either take action itself to resolve the problem, or start some automation code from a command list (CLIST) or command processor.

RTA functions

The RTA functions are:

Advantages of RTA

The advantages of using RTA are:

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