Data input

The primary data source for CICS PA is the data collected by the CICS® Monitoring Facility.

CMF data (SMF type 110)

CMF data is written to the MVS™ System Management Facilities (SMF) data set as SMF type 110 records, subtype 1. Subsequently the data can be made available offline for analysis by CICS PA.

There are three types, or “classes”, of CMF data analyzed by CICS PA:
CMF Performance class data
Detailed transaction-level information, such as the processor and elapsed time for a transaction, or the time spent waiting for I/O.
CMF Exception class data
Information about exceptional conditions suffered by a transaction, such as queuing for file strings, or waiting for temporary storage. This data highlights possible problems in system operation.
CMF Transaction resource class data
Additional transaction-level information about individual resources accessed by a transaction. Currently, the transaction resource class covers file and temporary storage resources only.

To understand the function of CICS PA and to interpret the reports and extracts properly, some knowledge of the CMF data records and their relationship to one another is necessary. For a complete description of CMF data fields and to understand how the fields are collected, see the CICS Performance Guide.

Note: Take care when using the information in this section to analyze monitoring data that is appropriate to your release of CICS. You can use Table 1 to determine in which CICS release particular monitoring fields are available.
Another major data source for CICS PA is statistics data:
CICS statistics and server statistics data
SMF type 110 records, subtypes 2, 3, 4, and 5.
CICS Transaction Gateway statistics
SMF type 111 records.

Other data sources

CICS PA also analyzes the following types of data:
DB2® accounting data
SMF type 101 records written by DB2 on behalf of CICS attached tasks.
WebSphere® MQ accounting data
SMF type 116 records written by WebSphere MQ on behalf of CICS attached tasks.
System Logger data
SMF type 88 records written by the MVS System Logger on behalf of CICS Transaction Server journaling.
OMEGAMON® XE for CICS data
SMF type 112 records written by OMEGAMON XE for CICS to log CICS transaction usage by the database management systems Adabas, CA-Datacom, CA-IDMS, and Supra.

The CICS PA Historical Database is a repository for CMF performance class data, CICS statistics and server statistics data, and CICS Transaction Gateway statistics data.