In this chapter, we demonstrate how the CICS Interdependency Analyzer (IA) collected data can assist with generating CICS Events.

In this section, we look at how CICS IA can be used to assist when creating IBM CICS Transaction Server (TS) Events.

IBM CICS TS business applications are the main source of business information in most large enterprises. The CICS run time detects instances of events that are enabled and captures the events and payload without the need to make application code changes or to provide system code. CICS Event processing is a core component of the CICS run time and provides all the qualities of service you would expect of CICS. It is possible to emit events in formats that are suitable for use by IBM Operational Decision Manager Events, IBM Business Monitor, and other users.

For more information about CICS TS Events, see the IBM Redbooks publication Event Processing with CICS, SG24-7792. See the section for information about “Help from IBM” on page 240.

We look at the following topics:

We use the following scenario.

The GENAPP application allows you to create new insurance policies for an existing customer. It also allows you to create new customer records. The company manager wants to quickly inform his team of insurance brokers that a new customer account has been created.

Updating the GENAPP code to achieve this requirement would be expensive. By using the application knowledge provided by the collected CICS IA data, we can achieve this requirement by using a CICS TS Event.

In this example, we call the event: NEW_CUSTOMER.

In this section, we perform the following actions:

We do not deploy the event. Information about how to fully install and deploy the event can be found in “Chapter 6 - Capture Application Events” in the Redbooks publication Event Processing with CICS, SG24-7792. See information about “Help from IBM” on page 240.

CICS TS Events are created as CICS Bundles and are eventually exported to the zFS directory as part of the deployment. Before using CICS IA to create an event, we need to create a CICS Bundle project to manage this event.

You create a CICS Bundle project by using the CICS Explorer. Go the “Resources” perspective and right-click the Project Explorer view and select New → Project as shown in Figure 7-1.

This action opens the New Project wizard. Select “CICS Bundle Project,” as shown in Figure 7-2.

Click Next.

Enter a meaningful name for your CICS Bundle as shown in Figure 7-3 on page 185.

Click Finish. We can now go back to the IA perspective and see where we should add the event.

We now need to understand the GENAPP application to determine where best to trigger the NEW_CUSTOMER event:

We know that transaction SSC1 is used to manage the customer accounts. So we see what resources are used by this transaction in region IYDZZ518, our test region.

In the Transactions view, right-click transaction SSC1 and select Uses Resources → Specific Region as shown in Figure 7-4.

We select region IYDZZ518 and the Uses view displays the resources used by transaction SSC1, as shown in Figure 7-5 on page 187.

More information about the Uses view can be found in 3.1.2, “The Uses view” on page 67.

 

We can see that the transaction uses file KSDSCUST and it issues an EXEC CICS WRITE against this file. We can assume from local knowledge that the WRITE is used to add a new customer record. By selecting the WRITE command, we can see that this command is issued by program LGACVS01.

Again, we can assume from local knowledge that program LGACVS01 adds a new customer record to the VSAM file KSDSCUST.

If you need to further understand the source code, you need to look at the source code. You can use IBM Rational Asset Analyzer with CICS IA to look at the actual source code. More information about Rational Asset Analyzer can be found in Appendix A, “IBM Rational Asset Analyzer” on page 225.

We drive the NEW_CUSTOMER event when program LGACVS01 is linked to. We only drive the event when the transaction is SSC1 and program LGACDB01 issues the link.

We can perform this action by right-clicking the LGACVS01 program in the By Resource section and selecting Create Event → LINK PROGRAM as shown in Figure 7-6.

You then need to select a CICS region where this event will be deployed as shown in Figure 7-7.

This action then drives the CICS TS Event wizard. First, you need to select the CICS Bundle project that you created previously and then give your event a name, as shown in Figure 7-8.

Click Finish and the Event Binding editor is opened as shown in Figure 7-9.

You can see that we created one event specification called NEW_CUSTOMER.

We can now click the Specifications folder shown in the lower-left corner and select the specification for “Capture_NEW_CUSTOMER” as shown in Figure 7-10. This figure shows the capture point. It has been pre-filled by CICS IA to select LINK PROGRAM as the capture point. If you want to emit an event and there is no suitable capture point in your application, for example, on a DB2 table update, you can use the CICS SIGNAL EVENT and the CICS IA to help in generating the event specification and filters.

We now look at the Filtering tab as shown in Figure 7-11.

You can see that CICS IA pre-filled the following fields:

Under Event Options, we selected the linked to program as LGACVS01.

For testing purposes, you could leave the user ID set so the event is only emitted when running under your user ID.

You can then add further filtering by using Application Data, then select Information Resources, and finally select your adapter. Again, this process is described in “Chapter 6: Capture Application Events” in the Redbooks publication Event Processing with CICS, SG24-7792. See the following section for information about “Help from IBM” on page 240.

 

To enable the collection of CICS Events data, you need to configure the collector to collect these events. To collect this data, you need to use the CINT transaction and select option 2 to “Configure Region Information”, then option 4 for “Options” against the default entry or a specific region entry, and then option 3 for “CICS API” calls. You can then change the CINT option for Events as shown in Figure 7-12.

If you select “Y” against the Events option, we capture data when an event is emitted and when a CICS SIGNAL EVENT is issued.

If you select “D” for detailed information, as well as capturing the above, we also capture information about the Event Binding, Event Capture, and Adapter information.

We capture three resource types when an event is emitted:

These types are shown when you request to see what resources are used by a transaction or program as shown in Figure 7-13. You also see that a SIGNAL EVENT has been issued.

We also display the full event next to the command that was used for the capture point, in this case the PROGRAM LINK to program LGACVS01, as shown in Figure 7-14 on page 195.

To open the Properties view, select Window → Show View → Properties from the menu bar (Figure 7-15).

Detailed event information is shown in the Properties view when you select the EVENT entry as shown in Figure 7-16.