A timer is a BTS object that expires when the
system time becomes greater than a specified date and time, or after a specified
period has elapsed. You can use a timer to, for example, cause an activity
to be activated at a particular time.
Note:
A timer that specifies
a date and time that has already passed expires immediately. Similarly, if
the requested interval is zero, the timer expires immediately.
To define a timer, use the DEFINE TIMER command. When you define a timer,
a timer event is automatically associated with it--see Timer events.
To force a timer to expire before its specified time, use the FORCE TIMER
command.
To check whether a timer has expired and, if it has, whether it expired
normally or following a FORCE TIMER command, use the CHECK TIMER command.
- If a piece of processing (for example, At midnight
on 31st December, prepare an annual customer statement) could result
in a large number of timers being set to expire at the same time, put the
timers in groups and stagger the expiry times. This spreads the load on CICS® and improves performance.
- If you shut down CICS at regular times, and know beforehand that at certain
times it will be unavailable, try not to set a large number of timers to expire
at these times. The timer events all fire when CICS is restarted, which could
affect CICS startup performance.
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