Command Flow view

You can find out if whether command flow information is collected about a transaction from any view where a Transaction resource is displayed in the CICS® IA plug-in.

Procedure


What to do next

To view the Command Flow of a transaction, right-click the chosen transaction in the transactions tab and select Show Command Flow runs from the menu. You can then either choose to display the command flow runs for all user IDs, the current user ID, or specific user IDs.

Screen capture of the menu displayed when you right-click a transaction. The options are Show Tasks, Used By Programs, Used By Transactions, Show Affinities By Type, Show Command Flow runs, Uses Resources, Show View and, Asset Details. From the Show Command Flow runs menu option is another menu with options All user IDs, Current user ID and Select user IDs...

The results are displayed in the Show Resources view. The user ID is shown with the region, the time of the first command issued for each user ID, and the Task ID.

Screen capture of the results of the Command Flow runs options that show the user ID with the region, the time of the first command issued for each user ID, and the Task ID

You can analyze the Task ID information that is associated with a user ID by, right-clicking a Task ID and select Show Execution option from the menu.

Screen capture of the menu displayed when you right-click a Task ID. Options in the menu are Show Execution, Used By Programs and Used By Transactions.

The results, that show the execution of that task, are displayed in the Command Flow view.

Screen capture of the Command Flow View showing all three sections, TCB Modes Used, TCB Mode Switches, and the Command Flow information.

The information in the Command Flow view is broken down into three sections, TCB Modes Used, and TCB Mode Switches in the upper section of the view, and the lower section of the view that displays the Command Flow information.

The Command Flows are ordered by time under the Program that ran the command. TCB Mode and previous TCB Mode are shown for each command.

Screen capture of the results displayed in the Command Flow view.

If a command caused a TCB Mode switch to occur the icon for the command has a TCB mode switch icon attached to it. If the command has a nonzero RESP or RESP2 code the icon for the command has a warning icon attached to it. If you click a command with the warning icon the response codes and reason codes are displayed in the lower bar of the Command Flow view in decimal:

Screen capture showing RESP=16 RESP2=305 in the lower bar of the Command Flow view
The Task ID and response code and reason codes are displayed in hexadecimal in the command flow view; the status bar displays their decimal information.

If you open the command flow editor for your user ID and change the query but do not save, when you try and start your user ID you are prompted to avoid the data loss. When the editor is closed you are prompted with a warning which allows you to either restore the editor with the unsaved changes or to ignore the failure and not to restore the editor.

You cannot open the command flow editor (view) when the collector is running, the corresponding button is disabled automatically when it starts. If the editor is already open, you can open the IA Operations view and click start, in which case you see a warning telling you that you must stop it first. You can use the editor to change some values, but you cannot save the changes until you stop the collector. The warning message allows you to do so by pressing Yes. Or you can go back to the editor by clicking No.

Column customizing

You can use the Column menu to customize the columns and the Command Flow information displayed in the lower section of the Command Flow view. The default is four columns, an expanding tree under the Transaction name, Task Control Block (TCB), previous Task Control Block (TCB), and Command Time Local. Click the Column menu icon Downward arrow to display the options.
Screen capture of the Column menu with the options Reset Columns, Equalize Column Widths, and Customize Columns.
  • Click Reset Columns to reset the view to the four default columns.
  • Click Equalize Column Widths to set the column widths to the same size as each other.
  • Click Customize Columns to display the Customize Columns window, you can add or remove other columns and information to the Command Flow information.
    Screen capture of the Customize Columns window showing available columns on the left that you can add to the view and current columns in the view on the right.

TCB Modes Used

You can maximize and minimize the command flow tree using the plus and minus icons. The total commands issued is displayed in the upper right of the view.

The TCB Modes Used view displays a summary of the TCB modes that were used during the execution of the task.

Screen capture of the TCB Modes Used section of the Command Flow view.

Commands and Resources are grouped and displayed by the mode that they operated under. If you select a command the command flow tree highlights the command in the lower section of the Command Flow view.

Screen capture of the Command flow view showing a selected command in the TCB Modes Used and the corresponding information highlighted, in the lower section of the view.

TCB Mode Switches

The TCB Mode Switches section of the Command Flow view displays a summary of any TCB mode switches that occurred during the running of the task.

Screen capture of the TCB Mode Switches section of the Command Flow view.

Commands and Resources are grouped and displayed by the mode that they switched from and to. If you select a command the command flow tree highlights the command in the lower section of the Command Flow view.

Creating an Event Processing Capture Specification

You can use the Command Flow information to create a capture specification to be used with Event Processing:

  1. Right-click on a command with the asterisk icon in the Command Flow view.
  2. Select Create Event and select the type of event that you want to create. The Create Event Binding from a CICS® resource wizard opens. You can select this for only resources and API calls that match valid EP resources.
Note: You must have a CICS event bundle previously created.

Events associated with EXEC CICS commands

Events associated with EXEC CICS commands are displayed as child nodes of the command in the view. These child nodes are the events that are triggered against a command.