Auditing changes to resource definitions

To help you audit changes to resource definitions, you can use the CICSĀ® Configuration Manager batch command program to produce a CICS Resource Definition Changes Report. This report shows the changes to resource definitions that CICS Configuration Manager records in its journal. When requesting the report, you can specify criteria for the changes you are interested in, such as: when the change occurred, who performed the change, and details of the changed resource definitions. You can request two views of the report, package or resource:

Package view
Shows changes to resource definitions caused by migrating, importing, or backing out a change package.

The package view contains a summary report of the migrate, import, and backout events that meet your criteria, followed by a detail report for each change package shown in the summary report.

You can request the package view in three levels of detail: activity, resource, or attribute. The level of detail determines the contents of the detail reports:

Activity level
Shows all ready, unready, approve, disapprove, migrate, import, and backout events, regardless of the criteria you specified, where the change package used the same migration scheme as an event for the change package in the summary report.
Resource level
Expands each migrate, import, and backout event from the summary report to show changed resource definitions.
Attribute level
Expands each changed resource definition to show before and after values of changed attributes.
Resource view
Shows changes to resource definitions by any method, including editing, copying, and deleting using the CICS Configuration Manager ISPF dialog and migrating, importing, or backing out a change package.

You can request the resource view in two levels of detail, resource or attribute:

Resource level
Lists changed resource definitions that meet your criteria.
Attribute level
Expands each changed resource definition to show before and after values of changed attributes.
Tip: By default, the resource view includes changes caused by change packages. However, you can specify criteria (CPID EQ <BLANK>) to exclude such changes, so that the resource view shows all changes except those caused by change packages. This enables you to use the package view for changes caused by change packages, and the resource view for all other changes. So, for example, you might want to produce both a weekly package view and a weekly resource view; that is, both specifying the criteria DATE GE TODAY-7, with the resource view also specifying the criteria CPID EQ <BLANK>.

Auditing changes using the ISPF dialog:

In addition to producing batch reports of changes to resource definitions, you can also use the CICS Configuration Manager ISPF dialog to browse this information interactively: