April 2010: updates to V3.1 for Performance Alerts

APAR PM04580 introduces Performance Alerts in CICS® Performance Analyzer for z/OS® V3.1, and includes the following new features and changes:

Performance Alerts
Allow you to compare CICS transaction performance against user-defined levels of acceptable performance. A Performance Alert Definition specifies a list of CICS resources to be monitored or managed, together with thresholds that benchmark expected levels of performance. The reports apply to CMF data only. You can report Performance Alerts in various ways:
  • By Transaction. The Performance List report has been enhanced to list all transactions that have triggered one or more alerts. It can also be an alert-specific report by reporting only those transactions that generate an alert.
  • By Transaction Summary. The Performance Summary report has been enhanced to provide the total or percentage of transactions that have triggered alerts.
Resource Definitions
Primary menu option 9 now invokes the Resource Definitions menu. It includes the two options previously available from the Application Grouping menu which allowed you to define Resource Lists and Application Groups. A third option has been added to allow you to define Performance Alerts.
Copy alert definitions
You can now copy definitions of Statistics Alerts and Performance Alerts to the same or another repository.
Report Forms
Report Forms have been enhanced to enable Performance Alert reporting while utilizing the flexibility of Forms. List and Summary Report Forms now allow the SEV function for alert reporting fields. Existing List Forms will be automatically upgraded next time you edit them to include the new Fn (Function) column required for the new alert SEV function. For SEV fields in the Summary Report Form, specify the alert severity level, INFO, WARNING or CRITICAL, and report type COUNT or PERCENT. In addition, the Summary Report Form supports the new ALERT field name to provide total counts or percentages of transactions for each alert severity for the summary key.
Report Sets
Performance List and Summary report and extract specifications have been enhanced to include predefined Performance Alerts to work together with, or instead of, Report Forms.

Also, you can request an interval-based Performance Summary report or extract to add or override the Form summary key fields without altering the underlying Report Form.

Sample JCL
Four new JCL members are provided in the CICS PA sample library, SCPASAMP. The new sample jobs are CPAPALST, CPAPASUM, CPAPAXTL, and CPAPAXTS to request a List or Summary report or extract using pre-defined Performance Alerts.