RMF report example: large SWITCH LOCAL Time in CICS execution phase

Figure 50 shows a work manager state data section for a CICSPROD service class. The SWITCH LOCAL time in the response time breakdown section shows a value of 6645.

Figure 50. High SWITCH time in a CICS execution environment
REPORT BY: POLICY=HPTSPOL1  WORKLOAD=PRODWKLD SERVICE CLASS=CICSPROD  RESOURCE GROUP=*NONE  PERIOD=1 IMPORTANCE=HIGH
 
 -TRANSACTIONS--  TRANSACTION TIME   HHH.MM.SS.TTT
 AVG        0.00  ACTUAL             000.00.00.150
 MPL        0.00  QUEUED             000.00.00.039
 ENDED      3599  EXECUTION          000.00.00.134
 END/SEC    4.00  STANDARD DEVIATION 000.00.00.446
 #SWAPS        0
 EXECUTD    2961
 
            -------------------------------RESPONSE TIME BREAKDOWN IN PERCENTAGE-----------------   ------STATE------
 SUB    P   TOTAL ACTIVE READY  IDLE ---------------------------WAITING FOR----------------------   SWITCHED TIME (%)
 TYPE                                  LOCK  I/O  CONV  DIST  LOCAL SYSPL REMOT TIMER  PROD  MISC   LOCAL SYSPL REMOT
 CICS  BTE  26.8K  75.1  98.4    659   0.0   0.3   154  0.0    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   25.8K  149   0.0   7.8
 CICS  EXE   93.7  38.6   5.6    0.0   0.0   0.1   0.0  0.0    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   49.4   0.0  6645   0.0   0.0
 

Possible explanations

This situation can be explained by instances of distributed transaction processing

If, while executing a transaction, an AOR needs to function ship a request to another region (for example, to a file-owning or queue-owning region), the execution time reported in the RMF™ report for the AOR (the CICS® EXE field) includes the time spent in that other region.

However, if a program initiates distributed transaction processing to multiple back-end regions, there can be many AORs associated with the original transaction. Each of the multiple back-end regions can indicate they are switching control back to the front-end region (SWITCH LOCAL). Thus, with a 1-many mapping like this, there are many samples of the execution phase indicating switched requests--long enough to exceed 100% of the response time of other work completing in the service class.

Possible actions

None.

Related concepts
Interpreting the RMF workload activity data
RMF report examples:
RMF report example: very large percentages in the response time breakdown
RMF report example: response time breakdown data is all zero
RMF report example: execution time greater than response time
RMF report example: fewer ended transactions with increased response times
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