Defining Application Groups

To define an Application Group:

  1. Select option 8 Resource Definitions from the CICS PA Primary Option Menu.

    If you have not yet defined a repository, you can do so from here. Specify the name of an existing repository, or if you specify a new data set name, CICS PA prompts you to create a new repository. For details, see Repository.

  2. If you already know that you want to refer to Resource Lists when defining Application Groups, use option 1 to define the Resource Lists first. For details on defining Resource Lists, see Resource Lists.

    Otherwise, select option 2 Application Groups to display the Application Groups panel:

    Figure 1. Application Groups
       File  Options  Help
     -------------------------------------------------------------–--–--------------
                                   Application Groups               Row 1 to 1 of 1 
     Command ===> ________________________________________________ Scroll ===> PAGE 
                                                                                    
     Select to edit Application Group (APG). Enter NEW command to define a new APG. 
                                                                                    
     /  Name                Description                  Changed        ID          
     _ BUSFUNC  Business functions                   2008/05/06 12:46 GXH           
     ******************************* Bottom of data ********************************
  3. To define a new Application Group, enter NEW on the command line, and then enter a name for the Application Group in the pop-up window.

    An Application Group name consists of 1-8 characters. The first character must be an alphabetic character (A-Z) or a national character (@, #, or $). The remaining characters can be alphabetic, national, or numeric (0-9) characters. Do not specify a name that matches a CMF field name or the leading characters of a CMF field name. For example, do not specify APP, because it matches the leading characters of the CMF field name APPLID, among others. However, APPG is valid.

    Report or extracts for this Application Group will contain a column heading consisting of the Application Group name followed by the word "Group".

    To edit an existing Application Group, enter line action S next to the Application Group.

    Figure 2. Editing an Application Group
       File  Edit  Confirm  Lists  Options  Help
     -------------------------------------------------------------–--–------------- 
                          EDIT Application Group - BUSFUNC          Row 1 to 2 of 2 
     Command ===> ________________________________________________ Scroll ===> PAGE 
                                                                                    
     Description  . . . Business functions__________________                        
     Resource field . . TRAN____  +  User field offset  ___  Length  ___            
                                                                                    
     Specify the Application names and their resource values.                       
                                                                                    
                                          ------------ Resources -------------      
     /  Application Name                  Values                 List +      
     _  Statistics collection             $*______________ (2)   ________           
     _  Accounting                        A*______________       ________           
     _  CICS-supplied transactions        ________________       CICSTRAN           
     _  Delivery                          D*______________       ________           
     _  Finance                           F*______________       ________           
     _  Unassigned transactions           *_______________       ________           
     ******************************* Bottom of data ********************************

    Before adding Applications to an Application Group, you must specify the resource field whose values will define the Applications. All Applications in an Application Group must refer to values of the same resource field, such as the CICS® transaction ID (TRAN).

    The order of the Applications on this panel is significant. Reports or extracts associate input records with the first matching Application. In the following example, Application B never appears in a report, because input records always match Application A first:

    Application Name  Values
    Application A     AP*
    Application B     APB*

    To enable matches with Application B, you would move Application B before Application A in the list. Report rows that do not match any Application contain *noapg* in the Application Group column. To specify a different label for these rows, insert an Application name such as "No match" at the end of the list, with a single asterisk (*) as its value:

    Application Name  Values
    Application B     APB*
    Application A     AP*
    No match          *

    This Application matches any records that have not already matched an Application in the list. If you do not want these rows to appear in a report, then, when requesting the report, specify selection criteria either to only include records that match the Applications or to exclude records that do not match any Application.

    The Application Group details are:

    Description
    Free-format text of up to 36 characters describing the Application Group. This description appears on the Application Groups panel to help identify each Application Group, but it does not appear in reports or extracts.
    Resource field
    The name of the CMF character field whose values identify the Applications. For example, to identify Applications by their CICS transaction IDs, specify TRAN as the resource field name. The resource field can be either a user character field (specified in the MCT) or one of a limited set of predefined CMF character fields:
    Field name
    Description
    TRAN
    Transaction identifier
    TERM
    Terminal ID
    USERID
    User ID
    PROGRAM
    Program name
    APPLID
    CICS Generic APPLID
    APPLPROG
    Application naming Program
    APPLTRAN
    Application naming Tran ID
    FCTY
    Transaction Facility name
    OTRAN
    Originating Transaction identifier
    OUSERID
    Originating User ID
    OAPPLID
    Originating CICS APPLID
    OFCTY
    Originating Transaction Facility name
    PHTRAN
    Previous Hop Data Transaction ID
    PHAPPLID
    Previous Hop Data APPLID
    PSBNAME
    PSB Name
    OMEGWORK
    OMEGAMON® User work area

    To select from the list of predefined fields, press Prompt (F4). If you specify a user field name, you must also specify an offset and a length, indicating the part of the field you want to compare with the Application values.

    User field offset and length
    If you specify a user field in Resource field then you must also specify an offset and a length. These identify the part of the user field that you want to compare with the Application values. The offset is the position of the first character and the length is the number of characters from this position. To compare the entire field, specify offset 1 and the maximum field length. For example, if the user field contains the value ABCDEFG, specifying offset 1 and length 4 gives the output ABCD, which is then compared with the Application values.

    If you specify a predefined CMF field in Resource field you cannot specify an offset or a length. The entire field value is always compared with the Application values.

    Application name
    Free-format text of up to 32 characters, including mixed-case characters and blanks. This name appears in reports and extracts on rows that match the Application values, under the column heading for the Application Group.
    Values
    For each Application, you must specify one or more values of the resource field that identify the performance records belonging to the Application. You can specify these values in either of two ways:
    • Refer to a Resource List that contains the values.
    • Specify the values individually.

      The Values column shows only the first value of an Application. You can edit the first value directly in the Values column. If an Application has more than one value, the number of values appears in parentheses (n) next to the first value. To edit these other values, enter line action S. This displays the Value List panel, showing all of the values for the Application:

      Figure 3. Editing the resource field values for an Application
      Command ===> ____________________________________________________________
                                                                               
      Application Name: Statistics collection                                  
                                                                               
      Specify Resource Values.                                                 
                                                                               
      $*______________  #*______________  ________________  ________________   
      ________________  ________________  ________________  ________________   
      ________________  ________________  ________________  ________________   
      ________________  ________________  ________________  ________________   
                                                                               
      If more than 16 values are required, you must use a Resource List.
                                                                               
      Press END (F3) to save the values, CANCEL (F12) to abort.                

      Masking characters % (exactly one character) and * (any number of characters) are allowed. For example, specify TR* to match all values starting with TR. To specify a null value, type two single quotes ' ' or '' . You can specify up to 16 individual values for an Application. If you need to enter more than 16 values, define a Resource List.

    (Resource) List
    A Resource List is a set of values that you can refer to by name. If you want to define the same Application in several Application Groups, then rather than specifying its field values separately in each Application Group, consider defining and referring to a Resource List. If you want to specify more than 16 values for an Application, then you must use a Resource List, even if you do not intend to refer to the Resource List in other Application Groups.

    To select a Resource List, press Prompt (F4).

    To define a Resource List, select Lists in the action bar. After defining the Resource List, you return to this Application Group panel, so that you can refer to the newly defined Resource List. For more details, see Resource Lists.

    Note:
    1. Resource Lists and Application Groups are both stored in a repository. An Application Group can only refer to Resource Lists that are stored in the same repository as the Application Group.
    2. Application Groups cannot refer to Object Lists. Object Lists are stored in the Control Data Set specified in your CICS PA Profile. For details, see Object lists versus resource lists.