Rather than writing your own distributed routing program, you can use CICSPlex® SM services to route BTS activities around your BTS-sets.
For BTS support, you need the CICSPlex SM component of CICS® Transaction Server for OS/390®, Version 1 Release 3.
CICSPlex SM’s workload management (WLM) function provides a dynamic
routing program that can route eligible transactions (those defined as dynamic)
from a requesting region to a suitable target region selected at the time
the transaction is initiated.
WLM functions
CICSPlex SM’s dynamic routing program supports:
- Workload separation, which is the routing of particular
transactions to a particular group of target regions based on BTS process-type,
or a combination of process-type and transaction name, or any combination
of user ID, terminal ID, and transaction name. For example, using CICSPlex
SM’s workload separation function, you can specify that transactions beginning
with the characters 'SAL' and initiated by members of your sales department
must be routed to the group of target regions, SALESGRP, allocated to that
department.
- Workload balancing, which is the routing of transactions
among a group of target regions according to the availability and activity
levels of those regions. Workload balancing can be used in addition to, or
in place of, workload separation. For example, CICSPlex SM can balance the
transaction workload among the SALESGRP regions by selecting, as each transaction
is initiated, the target region that is likely to deliver the best performance.
Inter-transaction affinity, which
is the requirement for related transactions to be processed by the same target
region. The IBM® CICS Interdependency Analyzer for z/OS® can be used to identify affinities between transactions.
For information about the IBM CICS Interdependency Analyzer for z/OS, see the CICS Interdependency Analyzer for z/OS User's Guide and Reference.
For further introductory information about CICSPlex SM and workload management,
see the CICSPlex System Manager Concepts and Planning manual, GC33-0786.
When routing BTS activities around a BTS-set, CICSPlex SM Workload Management
selects a target region based on:
- Any workload separation criteria that you have defined
- The current workloads of the eligible regions
- Any active affinities
- The speed of the communication links to the eligible regions.
The CICSPlex SM component of CICS Transaction Server for OS/390, Version 1 Release 3 understands BTS processes and activities.
This makes it possible to separate a BTS workload based on process-type.
For example, you could specify that WLM is to route all processes of process-type 'TRAVEL'
to one region in the BTS-set, and all processes of type 'PAYROLL'
to another region.
CICSPlex SM WLM and the
IBM CICS Interdependency Analyzer for z/OS
understand
affinities between BTS activities and processes. Although BTS itself
does not introduce any affinities, and discourages programming techniques
that do, it does support legacy code, which may introduce affinities. You
must define such affinities to CICSPlex SM WLM, so that it is able to make sensible
routing decisions. It is particularly important to specify each affinity’s
lifetime; failure to do so may restrict WLM’s routing options unnecessarily.
Note that:
- A single CICSPlex SM may control routing within multiple BTS-sets. It cannot
route activities across BTS-sets.
- Workload separation can be performed at two levels:
- By creating multiple BTS-sets.
- By CICSPlex SM within a BTS-set.
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