Transaction tracking

Transaction tracking provides the capability to identify the relationships between tasks in an application as they flow across regions in a CICSplex. Transaction tracking can help you in auditing and problem determination. Functions are provided to locate specific tasks based on information in the point of origin, to find interrelated hung tasks, and to identify work initiated by non-CICS® adapters (such as IBM® MQ).

Transaction tracking provides a standard framework for the tracking and resolution of interrelated CICS transactions. You can use transaction tracking to improve productivity, simplify system operation tasks, and perform problem determination. Transaction tracking provides tighter integration between other products, such as IBM MQ, and an extension of the scope of transaction tracking to other interfaces, including WebSphere® Optimized Local Adapter and CICS sockets. The IBM MQ task-related user exit (TRUE) provides support for transaction tracking.

Transaction tracking provides the following features:
End-to-end transaction tracking
End-to-end transaction tracking is a method of propagating the context of an application across the interrelated tasks within and between CICS systems.
Point of origin
Transaction tracking provides a mechanism to track the point of origin of a transaction by associating an initial user task with other tasks that have been created from it. Transaction tracking also describes the way in which a task was started. The created tasks carry information about the initial user task as origin data. For more information about the association data components, see Association data.

Such tracking data is propagated across IPIC and MRO to provide a complete story across the CICSPlex® for all user tasks including CICS supplied transactions started by a user (for example, CEMT) or running on behalf of a user-initiated transaction (for example, CSMI). For tasks created by non-CICS transports (for example, adapters connecting to other software applications such as IBM MQ) there is the ability for these tasks to participate in transaction tracking by injecting their own unique task metadata, describing their origin, into the propagated context of each transaction they initiate.

Transaction group
A transaction group is an association of transactions that all contain the same unique identifier of the originating transaction in the TRNGRPID.
Adapter tracking
Adapter tracking tracks tasks that are created by non-CICS transports (for example, adapters that connect to other software applications such as IBM MQ), which can participate in transaction tracking. The adapters can add unique task metadata, describing the origin, into the propagated context of each transaction they initiate. This adapter data is carried in the origin data section of the association data and can be used to track the transactions started by the adapter.

Examples of adapter data added to a task's origin data is when tasks start as a result of requests coming into CICS from z/OS® Connect over the IPIC protocol. z/OS Connect passes adapter data, which is added to the origin data. This feature requires z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition 3.0.30.0 or later. Another example is when the CICS-MQ trigger monitor or CICS-MQ bridge initiate tasks as a result of the arrival of MQ messages. The CICS-MQ adapter will append adapter data giving information about the MQ queue involved.

Adapter data is written as part of the origin data into the CICS 110 SMF monitoring record. If the task accesses Db2®, the CICS-Db2 attach will detect the presence of adapter data and, if ACCOUNTREC(UOW) or ACCOUNTREC(TASK) is set on the DB2CONN or DB2ENTRY definition, will pass the data to Db2.

The adapter ID, preceded by an 28-character eyecatcher, is passed as appl-longname as follows:
CICS_ORIGIN_DATA:ADAPTER_ID:adapter_id
The adapter data, preceded by an 36-character eyecatcher, is passed as an accounting-string as follows:
CICS_ORIGIN_DATA:ADAPTER_DATA_1_2_3:adapter_data

Db2 will write the data in its SMF accounting records and the data is also available online through the Db2 special registers CURRENT CLIENT_APPLNAME and CURRENT CLIENT_ACCTNG.

Note:
  • This capability requires CICS TS 5.5 with APAR PH30252 and Db2 12 with APAR PH31447 or higher.
  • You can disable the passing of adapter origin data to Db2 by specifying the following feature toggle: 
    com.ibm.cics.db2.origindata=false