What's new in the CICS IA V3.2 plug-in

Enhancements to the CICS® IA V3.2 plug-in.

New function
Extended data for TRUE (Task Related User Exits)

A new parameter retrieves product details for TRUE Exit type resources.

Application support

You can use the menus in the Applications view to find resources used by that application, and to find the transactions and programs that define that application. See the Applications view topic for more information.

Collection ID Scoping You can restrict the IA plug-in to show data for a particular collection ID at one time so you can be explicit about what data is displayed. See the Collection IDs view topic for more information.
New Affinities view

You can use the new Affinities view to display affinity results. The Affinities view can be populated by menu actions from Region, Program, or Transaction resources. See the Affinities view topic for more information.

Extended values for TYPE and COMMAND fields
The following two commands have been added to the CIU_CICS_DATA table:
  • EXEC CICS HANDLE CONDITION
  • EXEC CICS IGNORE CONDITION
The TYPE and COMMAND list in the CICS query editor have been updated to include:
  • TYPE=CONDITION
  • COMMAND=HANDLE
  • COMMAND=IGNORE
Affinity data

Dependency Data and Affinity Data have been separated and a new menu now opens when you right click in the Region, Program and Transaction tabs. Affinity data is organized and displayed using a tree-table structure. See the Using Affinities topic for more information.

New Webservice view

The CICS IA plug-in web services view shows an alphabetic list of all Web Services known to CICS IA, both inbound and outbound. See the Web Services view topic for more information.

History drop-down for find text boxes

You can use the toolbar to search for resources either by type, name (ID), or region. The ID and region text fields now store a list of previously searched text that you can select to repeat the search. See the Toolbar searching topic for more information.

Copy and paste
You can now copy and paste in the following views:
  • Used by
  • Uses
  • Command Flow
  • Properties
  • Show Resources
  • Transaction
  • Programs
  • Applications
  • Regions
New User Command Flow view

The User Command Flow view has been added to show command flow runs by all user IDs. You can show command flow runs by all user IDs, current user IDs, or specific user IDs. The results are displayed in the Show Resources view.

New IA Operations view

The IA Operations view has been added to show IA Collector and Command-Flow Collectors. Multiple live IA Collector connections can be maintained. See the IA Operations view topic for more information.

Enhancements to existing functionality
Preferences page The page size preference page is now available in the database retrieval parameters section. See the Setting database retrieval parameters topic for more information.
Migration

Queries are now stored in .xml format. All queries are automatically migrated the first time the IA plug-in runs, and any legacy files are saved in a folder named backup in the Explorer workspace on disk. See the Migrating from previous versions topic for more information.

Versions

Version 3.2 of the IA plug-in will now work with version 3.2 and version 3.1 of the IA database. When working in a version 3.2 CICS IA plug-in which is connected to an IA 3.1 database certain features are disabled or produce warnings. See the Backwards Compatibility section of the Migrating from previous versions topic for more information.

Execution tree

The execution tree has been improved by removing program LOAD entries. The execution tree also highlights any loops in the tree. The total indicator of transactions and programs in the tree has been removed from the view.

Uses Resources view queries

You can use the Uses Resources view to query the regions in which the program or transaction resource is being used. You can specify whether you want to analyze use for a specific region, or for all regions.

Visual indication of ability to run event processing capture specification

There is now an asterisk icon that indicates when event processing capture specification can be started from a resource.

New Scanner view You can use the Scanner view to view data captured by the IA scanners. View the programs under the data sets that the programs are loaded from, and the related CSECTs under the programs. See the Scanner view topic for more information.
Scanner query

You can create a scanner query to compare CICS collector and scanner data to make sure that the CICS IA data that is captured at run time and the data captured during the batch scanner are consistent.

User ID query

You can create a User ID query to display which User IDs have run transactions.

Implicit Wildcard on search facility has been removed

The implicit wildcard has been removed from the end of all search values. You can use an asterisk (*) as an explicit wildcard. For example, the search value *V* returns all results with a V in the name, V2* returns all results starting with V2, and V*2 returns all results beginning with V and ending with 2.

Capture specification with Event Processing in the Command Flow view

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

Capture specification with Event Processing in the Uses Resources view

You can use the Uses Resources information to create a capture specification to be used with Event Processing.

Show Event Details The IA Collector now collects details on events driven by EXEC CICS commands. If an event is collected, the details are visible in the Resources Used view or the Command Flow view as appropriate.