Using OMEGAMON AI for CICS to monitor your systems

This section illustrates how you can use OMEGAMON AI for CICS to resolve CICS® performance issues and monitor your z/OS® systems.

The FIND command
The FIND command lets you perform a search for active transactions and other activity of interest. You can search CICSplex-wide, or you can specify an LPAR or a custom user-defined group (USERGRP) within which to search.
The CONTEXT command
The CONTEXT command or the Context Selection option lets you search within groups of CICS regions other than the CICSplex you initially selected.
Using CP/SM CICS System Groups
To monitor the performance of system groups defined in CICSPlex OMEGAMON, use the CP/SM CICS System Groups workspace in OMEGAMON AI for CICS.
Using Program Tracking to identify CICS programs used by tasks
Program Tracking is a set of features, accessible via the enhanced 3270 user interface, that let you track CPU and other resource usage by CICS programs, to help you find programs that are causing performance issues.
Navigating between CICS task history and Db2 thread history
To evaluate the performance of a CICS transaction that uses Db2, you may need to examine CICS Task History and Db2 thread history. To make this easier, you can navigate directly between the Task History workspace in OMEGAMON AI for CICS and the Db2 Thread History in IBM OMEGAMON for Db2 on z/OS.
Viewing task times in enhanced display
You can view the task time values for tasks in the active Task display and Task History display based on wait and active times. You can also see a detailed view of the task times to identify where the task spent its time.
Bookmarking workspaces
You can bookmark some of the workspaces in the OMEGAMON enhanced 3270 user interface.
Enabling Task Related User Exit (TRUE) monitoring
You can monitor Task Related User Exit (TRUE) activity in the enhanced 3270 user interface. TRUE monitoring allows you to gauge the effect of applications using Task Related User Exits.
Specifying background tasks to remove from active task displays
If you have tasks that are normally running in the background and do not need to appear in the workspaces used for routine monitoring, you can use the CICS Background Tasks Summary workspace to create a list of such background tasks, specified by Transaction ID.
Service Level Batch utility
The following scenarios use the kcp_slabatch utility to enable a large number of updates to the CICS service level analysis (CICS SLA) definitions stored at the hub Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring Server.
Real time application trace
The real time application trace feature of OMEGAMON AI for CICS enables you to see the CICS requests made by an application program.
Displaying Outbound API Request Metrics
The CICS Outbound API Request Summary workspace, in the e3270UI, allows you to display Outbound API Request metrics.
Enabling and disabling Resource Limiting for multiple CICS regions
You can enable or disable Resource Limiting for multiple CICS region using the MULTI Region option. This option allows you to enable Resource Limiting rules for multiple CICS regions using a single command that helps you to save significant time in managing the resources.
Using Resource Limiting to enable application trace for looping tasks
Resource Limiting is a feature in OMEGAMON AI for CICS that allows you to set limits for resource usage by transactions. It allows you to set two limits for a transaction. A value at which a warning limit message is issued and another that causes the transaction to abend.
Viewing average response time at the CICS region and CICSplex level
Average response time has always been available through the CICSplex Performance Summary at the CICSplex panel. This however only showed data for completed intervals and did not respond immediately to sudden changes in activity. With the new values at the CICSplex and the CICS region level, the response time is calculated for the transactions that are recently completed allowing more rapid detection of changes.
Viewing SIT values in the System Initialization Table (SIT)
You can view the SIT values to verify that all your SIT keywords are properly defined in the System Initialization Table workspace. The System Initialization Table is used by CICS® at initialization time. The SIT contains global, startup parameters for the CICS region.
Viewing Original and Previous Task History data
You can view the original task and previous task history details within the same CICS region and previous hop data from another CICS region. This information helps you to identify the different components of a complex CICS transaction.
Viewing Umbrella data in Task History Summary
You can view the umbrella data related to a task in the Task History summary display. This information helps you to view important application-related data which might be useful in determining the task function.
Viewing transaction rate per second or per minute
You can view CICSplex transaction rates per minute (the default) or per second by setting the Transaction Rate option.
Short-on storage and communication problems
The following scenarios assume that you have worked through the Tivoli Enterprise Portal tutorial that accompanies these topics. These scenarios start from the point where you need to monitor a number of common situations that might occur in a CICS system.

Parent topic: Introducing OMEGAMON AI for CICS