New in this release

Version 4 release 1 of OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS includes a number of enhancements to its Tivoli Enterprise Portal features.

CICS Transaction Server Version 3 Release 2 now supported

IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS now monitors CICS Transaction Server V3.2 as well as prior releases. This support included enhancements to these attribute groups:

The following workspace changes have also been made to support CICS TS V3.2:

Support for event forwarding

If you are using Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC) V3.9 fix pack and higher, in addition to IBM Tivoli Monitoring, to manage events in your enterprise, you can now forward events reported by the IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS monitoring agent to this event management product. Using the TEC provides you with the ability to integrate and manage events from a single console. The benefits of Tivoli Enterprise Console and the details of how it can be integrated with IBM Tivoli Monitoring are described in the "Event integration scenarios" section of IBM Tivoli Monitoring: Installation and Setup Guide.

Before events can be forwarded, event forwarding must be enabled on the hub monitoring server, and a default destination server must be defined. In addition, the TEC server (the event server) must be configured to receive the events, a situation update forwarding process must be installed on the event server, and, for events forwarded to TEC the baroc and map files for the agent must be installed and imported on the event server. See IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS 4.1.0-TIV-KC5-FP0003 and the interim feature document in the fix pack for more information on this new feature.

Dynamic 3270 (classic) linking

Context sensitive linking is provided from an IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS workspace to 3270 (classic) interface panels. This feature uses the dynamic terminal integration support that is implemented in IBM® Tivoli® Monitoring, v6.2.1. Dynamic terminal integration support is an extension to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal that provides seamless access to 3270 based applications through context sensitive links.

The data that is used for the connection to the target workspace is gathered by OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS at runtime. This enhancement uses the new version of the Service Task Details query. This query provides the required data, which includes the host and port for the terminal emulator connection. The host name and common interface name can either be from the parameters specified at agent initialization, or the values gathered by OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS at runtime during the auto discovery process. The port number and LU group (if used) are not gathered by the auto discovery process and are acquired from the CICS agent parameters specified at agent initialization.

When you click a link icon in one of the following workspaces, and select a 3270 view, the classic interface is displayed enabling you to examine much more historical data (from 250 to 300 historical data items) than is available in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal workspace.

These are the predefined links to a 3270 session:

Note that each of the predefined workspace links to a 3270 session has an associated sample script. You should review these scripts prior to using them in your environment.

See the IBM Tivoli Monitoring v6.2.1 documentation for more details on the dynamic terminal integration support and the Tivoli Enterprise Portal help for instructions on using predefined links for workspaces.

See the Interim Features Supplement documentation (SC23–9983–00) for fix pack 4.1.0–TIV-KC5–FP0004 for more information on this new feature.

Application Trace workspace displays application trace data for a specific transaction

The new Application Trace workspace displays the application trace data in the Tivoli Enterprise Portal for a specific transaction. This workspace uses the new CICSplex Application Trace attribute group to populate the views. You can use this workspace to diagnose a performance problem when it is turned on for a short period of time or to diagnose overall problems within an application development environment.

This workspace has the following table views:

See the Interim Features Supplement documentation (SC23–9983–00) for fix pack 4.1.0–TIV-KC5–FP0004 for more information on this new feature.

Transaction tracking support

The new transaction tracking enhancement provides you with the ability to monitor all the components that consist of a CICS® application. OMEGAMON® XE for CICS on z/OS® interfaces with IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) for CICS v7.1.0 and ITCAM for Transactions v7.1.0 to correlate these transactions.

ITCAM for CICS v7.1.0 is used to track Dynamic Program Link (DPL) requests to or from a CICS program; it can track requests through CICS Transaction Gateway. ITCAM for CICS v7.1.0 provides a correlation for Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and WebSphere® MQ traffic into CICS. ITCAM for CICS also provides the capability to track CICS transaction routing and function shipping requests.

ITCAM for Transactions v7.1.0 can help you determine all the components of a complex transaction.

To support this enhancement, the Online Data Viewing workspace is expanded to enable new queries and allow linking to specify other filters from workspaces where the Web Service Operation or Web Service Name attributes are known. This workspace now has a link to the new Application Trace workspace, if trace data exists.

The following attributes are added to the CICSplex Online Data Viewing attribute group for transaction tracking support:

See the Interim Features Supplement documentation (SC23–9983–00) for fix pack 4.1.0–TIV-KC5–FP0004 for more information on this new feature.

Web Service monitoring enhancements

Depending on your link filtering, the new Web Services Transactions workspace enables you to view Web service and transaction details for a specific Web service or for all Web services and transactions. The Web Service Transactions workspace is accessed from new links within the Web Services Analysis workspace.

The Web Services Summary table view of the Web Services Analysis workspace contains the following links:

The Web Services Transactions workspace contains these table views:

By using the new Operation and Web Service Name attributes for the Web Service transaction that were added to the CICSplex Online Data Viewing attribute group, OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS provides an interface for providing extra information about a transaction; this is known as umbrella services and they are implemented through the KOCRMCLL and KOCGLCLL call programs. The details on how to use these interfaces are located in the KOCAPITX member of the TKANSAM library.

See the Interim Features Supplement documentation (SC23–9983–00) for fix pack 4.1.0–TIV-KC5–FP0004 for more information on this new feature.

Classifying CICS transactions into multiple service classes

Currently, in OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS v4.1.0, the Service Level Analysis feature classifies a transaction into a single service class. This new feature provides you with the ability to classify a CICS transaction into multiple service classes and view those service classes in the Service Level Analysis workspace.

Attempting to classify transactions into multiple service classes results in extra central processing unit (CPU) resource consumption. The amount of CPU usage is heavily dependant upon the number of service classes, the number and complexity of classification rules defined, and the number of CICS transactions to be classified. The activation of this feature merits careful consideration.

When you specify the SCLASS=ALL parameter on the WLM start command, each transaction is matched against all of the available classification rules. The new input field, WLM service classification is displayed on the Specify Configuration Parameters panel of the Configuration Tool.

See the Interim Features Supplement documentation (SC23–9983–00) for fix pack 4.1.0–TIV-KC5–FP0004 for more information on this new feature.

CICS SLA view helps you ensure SLA compliance

A new Tivoli Enterprise Portal view, the CICS SLA Alternative view, has been added with this release. Using it you can define workload-performance thresholds with which you can monitor your CICS transactions to ensure they comply with your site's service-level agreements (SLAs). You define such thresholds using three new CICS-specific portal objects: service policies, workloads, and service classes. The CICS SLA view lets you create these objects and activate them so your site can monitor its SLA compliance using the Service Level Analysis workspace.

This new feature incorporates all the function previously provided by the Candle® Management Workstation's Workload Definitions icon. For detailed information, including implementation steps, see CICS SLA Alternative view.

Dynamic workspace links support transfers into other OMEGAMON products

Dynamic, runtime workspace links have been added to these CICS workspaces to allow you to transfer to these products' workspaces for additional analysis of CICS monitoring data:

All these links function only if the target product is both installed and running when you invoke the link. In addition, if there are no matching filtering criteria, the link icon either does not show or shows grayed out.

Note:
Dynamic links from a OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS V4.1 workspace to an OMEGAMON XE V3.1 product function as long as the target workspace exists, although you may notice some behavioral changes. For example, the 3.1 version of the OMEGAMON XE for DB2 on z/OS product's Detailed Thread Exception workspace does not filter the data; hence, if you link to this workspace from the Transaction Analysis workspace, all threads are displayed.

If the target workspace does not exist in the V3.1 product, you receive the KFWITM081E error message.

View overall status of connections using the Connections Summary workspace

The new Connections Summary workspace (a part of the support for CICS Transaction Server V3.2) helps you analyze the efficiency of multiregion operation (MRO), intersystem communication (ISC), and IP interconnectivity connections (IPCONN) links, and detect capacity constraints that might cause bottlenecks. This workspace can be used to drive situations and give a picture of the health of the CICS connections that exist.

To support this new primary workspace, the CICSplex Connections Summary attribute group was created.

From the Connections Summary workspace, you can link to either the IP Connections Analysis workspace, the ISC Connections Analysis workspace, or the MRO Connections Analysis workspace. From the IP Connections Analysis workspace, you can link to the IP Connection Session Details workspace.

Web Services Analysis workspace analyzes World Wide Web intercommunication

With the new Web Services Analysis workspace, you can determine the status of the various aspects of Web-based program-to-program interactions with your CICS regions. Should your site experience problems connecting its CICS applications to business functions using the World Wide Web, this workspace helps you ensure that all necessary Web services are defined and available.

This workspace has the following views:

In addition, these subsidiary workspaces can be reached through the Document Template Details view to help you investigate the CICS resources associated with your Web services' document templates:

Enhanced Exit Program Analysis workspace provides additional user exit information

The Exit Program Analysis workspace has been enhanced to provide additional information about CICS Global User Exits (GLUEs) and Task-Related User Exits (TRUEs) running in your environment. The following new subsidiary workspaces have been added to retrieve this detailed information:

To support this new workspace, these are the new attribute groups:

Split workspaces enhance Tivoli Enterprise Portal performance

To reduce the amount of data shipped to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server, these workspaces have been split into summary and details versions:

You initially retrieve a summary report of the resources being analyzed and then drill down into a details workspace of a selected resource when required. The affected views are:

Corbaserver Summary report
Has been added, along with a subsidiary Corbaserver Details workspace.
Document Template Details report
Has been added, along with multiple detail reports, depending on the type of document template selected:
Pipeline Summary report
Has been added, along with a subsidiary Pipeline Details workspace.
Request Model Summary report
Has been added, along with a subsidiary Request Model Details workspace.
URIMAP Summary report
Has been added, along with a subsidiary URIMAP Detail workspace.
Web Services Summary report
Has been added, along with a subsidiary Web Services Details workspace.

Multirow purge support added to the Transaction Analysis workspace

This release provides the multiple-line-kill function, an enhancement that enables you to purge multiple transactions in a single action. Multiple rows in the Transaction Analysis workspace can be highlighted; the right-click action menu now includes a Purge selected tasks choice. Within a single view of all transactions running in the monitored CICS regions, you can now purge multiple transactions across multiple regions with a single Take Action command.

A confirmation dialog displays to allow you to change the requested Take Action command to include a Force Purge.

Transient Data Queues workspace enhanced

The Transient Data Queues workspace in OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS was designed to implement CICS exceptions as situations; the data displayed is limited to that required by these exceptions. To make the Transient Data Queues report more useful, a subset of the fields provided by the CUA interface within OMEGAMON II for CICS has been added.

In addition, three new Take Action commands for the deletion of transient data now allow situations to purge entries from a transient data or temporary storage queue; these are:

Note:
The following Take Action command was added to allow you or a situation to pass a WTO message, in mixed case and with OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS attribute values substituted, to the system operator: Sample WTO message issued by a command or situation.

Security enhanced for Take Action commands

Security for the native OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS Take Action commands (those prefixed by CP:) is now determined by a special set of security profiles. This includes all commands that the Tivoli Enterprise Portal passes directly to CICS Transaction Server for execution: AIDK, ICEK, SET, TDDL, TSQD, and WTO.

Note:
Security for z/OS console commands (for example, the CEKL command passed to CICS TS via the Modify command) is still controlled by the general Take Action security your site set up via NetView.

Support for the aggregation and pruning enhancements in Tivoli Data Warehouse

The Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW), the piece of the Tivoli Monitoring Services™ framework where OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS stores monitoring data for historical analysis, has been enhanced to support new data aggregation and pruning capabilities. With these new features, historical data can be summarized and rolled up into aggregate values while removing detail data that is no longer needed. These OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS attribute groups—for which historical data can be stored and retrieved—have been enhanced to exploit these new capabilities:

Note:
This enhancement may change the look and feel of the historical data within Tivoli Enterprise Portal.