CICS® monitoring data is collected at system-defined event monitoring points (EMPs) in the CICS code. Although you cannot relocate these monitoring points, you can choose which classes of monitoring data that you want to be collected. Programming information about CICS monitoring can be found in the CICS Application Programming Reference and the CICS Customization Guide.
You could use these additional EMPs to count the number of times a certain event occurs, or to time the interval between two events. If the performance class was active when a transaction was started, but was not active when a user EMP was issued, the operations defined in that user EMP would still run on that transaction's monitoring area. The DELIVER option would result in a loss of data at this point, because the generated performance record cannot be output while the performance class is not active. If the performance class was not active when a transaction was started, the user EMP would have no effect.
User EMPs can use the EXEC CICS MONITOR command. For programming information about this command, see the CICS Application Programming Reference.
Additional EMPs are defined in some IBM® program products, such as IMS™ DBCTL. From the CICS point of view, these are like any other user-defined EMP. EMPs in user applications and in IBM program products are defined by a decimal number. The numbers 1 through 199 are available for EMPs in user application, and the numbers from 200 through 255 are for use in IBM program products. In addition, the numbers can be qualified with an entry name so that you can use each number more than once. For example, PROGA.1, PROGB.1 and PROGC.1, identify three different EMPs because they have different entry names.
For each user-defined EMP there must be a corresponding monitoring control table (MCT) entry, which has the same entry name and identification number as the EMP that it describes.
You do not have to assign entry names and numbers to system-defined EMPs, and you do not have to code MCT entries for them.
You can also treat the fullword count fields as 32-bit flag fields to indicate special situations, for example, out-of-line situations in the applications, operator errors, and so on. The CICS monitoring facility includes facilities to turn individual bits or groups of bits on or off in these count fields.
Some users have a single transaction ID so that all user input is routed through a common prologue program for security checking or some other purpose, for example. In this case, it is very easy to record the subtransaction identifier in this prologue. (However, it is equally possible to route transactions with different identifiers to the same program, in which case this technique is not necessary.)