Performance measuring with Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS

Tivoli® Decision Support for z/OS® is a reporting system which uses DB2®. You can use it to process utilization and throughput statistics written to log data sets by computer systems. You can use it to analyze and store the data into DB2, and present it in a variety of forms.

Tivoli Decision Support consists of a base product with several optional features that are used in systems management:
  • Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS and optional features:
  • CICS® Performance Feature
  • IMS Performance Feature
  • Network Performance Feature
  • System Performance Feature
  • Workstation Performance Feature
  • iSeries Performance Feature
  • Accounting Feature
The Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS base includes:
  • Reporting and administration dialogs that use the Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF)
  • A collector function to read log data, with its own language
  • Record mapping (definitions) for all data records used by the features
Each feature provides:
  • Instructions (in the collector language) to transfer log data to DB2 tables
  • DB2 table definitions
  • Reports.

The Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS database can contain data from many sources. For example, data from System Management Facilities (SMF), Resource Measurement Facility (RMF), CICS, and Information Management System (IMS) can be consolidated into a single report. In fact, you can define any nonstandard log data to Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS and report on that data together with data coming from the standard sources.

The Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS CICS performance feature provides reports for your use when analyzing the performance of CICS Transaction Server, based on data from the CICS monitoring facility (CMF) and CICS statistics. These are some of the areas that Tivoli Decision Support can report on:
  • Response times
  • Resource usage
  • Processor usage
  • Storage usage
  • Volumes and throughput
  • CICS and DB2 activity
  • Exceptions and incidents
  • Data from connected regions, using the unit of work as key
  • CICS availability
  • CICS resource availability
The Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS CICS performance feature collects only the data required to meet CICS users' requirements. You can combine that data with more data (called environment data), and present it in a variety of reports. Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS provides an administration dialog for maintaining environment data. Figure 1 illustrates how data is organized for presentation in Tivoli Decision Support z/OS reports.
Figure 1. Organizing and presenting system performance data
Data from the operating system is written to various logs. The CICS performance feature of Tivoli Decision Support collects the relevant data and writes it to its own records. User-supplied environment data is also input, which is maintained in tables in the Tivoli Decision Support database. Tivoli Decision Support uses the data supplied by the user and the data it has collected directly from the system logs, to present reports to the user.
The Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS CICS performance feature processes these records:
CMF
  • CICS Transaction Server performance
  • CICS Transaction Server exceptions
  • CICS Transaction Server accounting, performance, and exceptions
Statistics
  • CICS Transaction Server statistics