Defining procedures and parameters

The operator will start all the data-gathering functions that are performed by the three monitors. Monitor I and Monitor III will probably run continuously, while the Monitor II background session might be started on request only. But, in each case, the START command should be as easy as possible for the operator.

Ease of operation is important also with respect to the automatic start-up procedures in most installations. Here, you do not want to have the operator typing in commands with many parameters or replying to many requests from the application. We therefore recommended you to define all start parameters and options in such a way that the appropriate values are selected by default. Only in exceptional cases should the operator have to override these values to handle a specific situation.

Of course, setting up all gathering options requires a common understanding with the system programmers who work with the data. They have to decide what data is to be gathered. Do they need data for performance monitoring and analysis, or for capacity planning and tuning? Different tasks might need different data, and you have to implement appropriate gathering procedures for each.

It is part of the administration task to allocate the appropriate data sets to ensure that the performance analysts have access to everything they need; not only to data from today or yesterday, but also to data gathered some time ago.