CICS SMF Transaction data is a rich source of performance insights, but its volume can make analysis challenging using traditional approaches that rely on static reports. Proactive assessment of key Statistics metrics across all regions is essential to identify potential risks to availability.
IntelliMagic Vision enables performance analysts to manage and optimize their z/OS CICS transactions more effectively and efficiently, as well as proactively assess the health of their CICS regions.
Profile transactions, save time, and access raw CICS data.
When analyzing CICS transaction performance, you need an easy and effective way to focus your analysis so you can rapidly find what you are looking for.
IntelliMagic Vision provides GUI-based, interactive reports with dynamic navigation and context-sensitive drilldowns to facilitate rapid and focused access to CICS data to tune, optimize, and profile your transactions.
With IntelliMagic Vision, you will be able to:
IntelliMagic Vision offers you the out-of-the-box visibility and seamless navigation to manage every component of your z Systems infrastructure under a single solution.
The CICS statistics 110.2 records contain several metrics that lend themselves to being assessed as part of the overall health of a region. IntelliMagic Vision assesses key metrics across every CICS region against best practice values to identify potential risks to availability that may warrant additional investigation.
The assessments are initially rolled up into user-defined logical groupings of regions and presented in a red/yellow/green manner that can be quickly consumed. From here the user can drill into the assessments for all regions making up the selected group, or directly into the metrics.
One common starting point for analysis of CICS workloads is a “Top n” view of transactions by total CPU consumption or by transaction volume (shown here).
Drilldowns from here can quickly focus the analysis on response times or other aspects of the transactions of interest.
The CICS SMF 110.1 records capture about 100 timing components for transactions. By drilling down on any transaction, the response time distribution can be analyzed, initially divided into the standard high-level summary categories for CICS response times.
Dynamic navigation and context-sensitive drilldowns enable additional detailed analysis based on the current display. Since a primary response time component for the transaction above was “Total I/O Wait Time,” the subcomponents of Total I/O Wait Time can be examined (again with a single click).
In this example, Wait for Control at end of MRO and Wait for RLS File I/O were the primary contributors to the I/O Wait response time component.
The ability to compare profiles across transactions by those primary CICS response time categories can also provide helpful insights. This example shows CPU per CICS transaction across the selected transactions.
A global filter can also be specified to further focus the selected transactions.
CPU per CICS transaction is often of particular interest when analyzing the impact of the implementation of an application release.
This is an example where the capability to easily compare values across any two time intervals can be very helpful.
If investigating a response time issue, one may choose to begin from a response time view. From here, analysis seeking to isolate the issue may examine response times for the selected transaction across systems and/or regions.
Other types of analysis may choose to start by viewing activity by CICS region. Analysis may continue by drilling down on a selected region into transactions, systems, or other criteria.
Capitalizing on the fact that Db2 Accounting data (SMF 101) captures the CICS transaction ID, IntelliMagic Vision seamlessly integrates key metrics from Db2 with the CICS SMF data. This set of charts integrates metrics from the CICS perspective on the top row (based on the transaction ID) and DB2 perspective on the bottom row (using the correlation name).
Finally, all the remaining non-timing fields in the CICS 110.1 records (approximately 275 in number) are available for detailed analysis and are organized into the subgroups provided in the IBM documentation. Transaction-level metrics of potential interest include Db2 SQL calls per CICS transaction (pictured here), log stream writes, getmains by CICS storage area, and program loads.
See how CICS reporting by IntelliMagic Vision provides insights into key health metrics, summarized by CICS group, with drilldowns into individual CICS regions.
