Viewing association data

You can use CICS Explorer®, the CICSPlex® SM WUI, or the INQUIRE ASSOCIATION and INQUIRE ASSOCIATION LIST commands to view association data. You can use the CICS® Performance Analyzer (CICS PA) and the sample monitoring data print program, DFH$MOLS, to report on association data.

Example: viewing association data with DFH$MOLS

When running DFH$MOLS against your SMF 110 records, your transaction tracking data might look something like this for a parent transaction called ASPA:

DFHTASK  P031     TRANNUM          0000042C                                           42
DFHCICS  C363     OTRAN            C1E2D7C1                                       ASPA    
 
DFHCICS  C373     PHNTWKID         00000000 00000000                                      
DFHCICS  C374     PHAPPLID         00000000 00000000                                      
DFHCICS  P376     PHTRANNO         0000000C                                            0  
DFHCICS  C377     PHTRAN           00000000                                               
DFHCICS  A378     PHCOUNT          00000000                                            0  
 
DFHCICS  P481     PTTRANNO         0000000C                                            0  
DFHCICS  C482     PTTRAN           00000000                                               
DFHCICS  A483     PTCOUNT          00000000                                            0

and like this for a child task called ASCH:

DFHTASK  P031     TRANNUM          0000043C                                           43
DFHCICS  C363     OTRAN            C1E2D7C1                                       ASPA    
 
DFHCICS  C373     PHNTWKID         00000000 00000000                                      
DFHCICS  C374     PHAPPLID         00000000 00000000                                      
DFHCICS  P376     PHTRANNO         0000000C                                            0  
DFHCICS  C377     PHTRAN           00000000                                               
DFHCICS  A378     PHCOUNT          00000000                                            0  
 
DFHCICS  T480     PTSTART          D169DEEC8300D482                         2016/09/28 09:04:29.011981
DFHCICS  P481     PTTRANNO         0000042C                                           42  
DFHCICS  C482     PTTRAN           C1E2D7C1                                       ASPA    
DFHCICS  A483     PTCOUNT          00000001                                            1

The child task ASCH has a PTTRAN value of ASPA, which identifies its parent, and PTCOUNT of 1, which indicates that it is one level deep within the CICS region (that is, it is a child task but not a grandchild). If task ASCH had children of its own, those children would have a PTTRAN value of ASCH, and a PTCOUNT of 2, which would identify those children as grandchildren of task ASPA.

Example: viewing association data with CICS Explorer

Assume that users suddenly report that their application is hanging. You know that the processing is by a web service request into CICS, and that this web service makes use of default pipeline processing, so you use the Tasks view in CICS Explorer to find all the instances of the CPIH pipeline transaction:

Double-click on the oldest instance of CPIH (task 494 on region IYK3ZAB4) to obtain its attributes and filter on suspend. This shows:

Screenshot showing typical setup. The Task panel is open and is titled 'Attributes'. 'Suspend' has been written in the search bar, and three of the results have been highlighted

You can see that the work is suspended and waiting on a response over IPCONN AB03 which is connected to region IYK3ZAB3. Right-click this top instance of CPIH to search for associated tasks:

Screenshot showing typical setup. The right-click pop up is showing with the options of Open, Search, Purge, and Copy. The option of 'Associated Tasks' branches out from the highlighted 'Search' option.

This shows which tasks are associated with this instance of CPIH in the Search results tab:

Screenshot showing typical setup. The Search tab is highlighted and displays 3 nested rows.

You know that the associated mirror task on IYK3ZAB3 is task 3142 which itself routed on to mirror task 2574 on region IYK3ZAB5. By default, the Search results tab shows the suspend reason for each task, so that you can see that it is suspended on TSMAINLM. As a result, you can check what is using all the temporary storage on IYK3ZAB5 and address this.

You can take a closer look at the origin data part of the association data. For the hanging mirror task, see this by right clicking on it in the Search results tab and selecting Task Association then Open:

This shows that the origin of the work in CICS was indeed the task mentioned above, pipeline handler task 494 on region IYK3ZAB4 for URIMAP $649090, and the web service request came in to CICS from IP address 9.20.201.152 port 57145 for user ID ALISONB. If you had noticed the hanging mirror task first, this information could be used to track back to the owner of the work; searching on this mirror’s associated tasks would give the same results as searching from the pipeline handler task.

What about work that is not initiated by web service requests? What information is available to identify their points of origin? This depends on the origin itself. For example, work from IBM® MQ makes use of adapter data fields of the origin data. The contents of these fields depend on how the work was initiated; for work initiated by the MQ trigger monitor as a result of a message put onto application queue ALITRIG1 on QMGR (queue manager) MQD6, you see the following:

Screenshot showing typical setup. It shows three columns titled Name, CICS Name, and Value. The row 'Origin data' is selected, revealing rows with more details.