Managing service level criteria

Service level criteria (SLCs) are performance objectives that require processing to occur within a certain time window.

For example, a Sterling Connect:Direct® process may need to begin by 20:00 and end by 20:30. An SLC can monitor for the timeliness of both events. If either does not occur within a certain window, the SLC can be used to notify you of that fact. IBM® Sterling Control Center Monitor can monitor processing start times, stop times, or durations depending on the type of SLC schedule you define. You can define a rule that creates an alert and then view the alert through the Alerts Monitor. The alert might lead you to investigate to determine why the processing did not occur as expected, and to make corresponding adjustments.

There are four types of SLCs:
  • Standard—Standard SLCs monitor specific Process names, file names, etc. Use standard SLC groups when you know the specific item to monitor.
  • Wildcard—Wildcard SLCs monitor Processes, file names, etc. with names that do not remain constant, such as Batch IDs with the date and time in their names. To specify monitoring criteria in wildcard groups, you can use the wildcard characters asterisk and question mark, or regular expressions (regex).
  • Workflow—Workflow SLCs monitor the flow of related Processes. For example, a workflow SLC can monitor a transaction consisting of three Processes, all of which must run and finish within three hours of the first Process's initiation.
  • Simple—Simple SLCs are created using a question/answer format to define the scenario you want to monitor and to select basic parameters and specify values for those parameters.