Uses view

From any view where a transaction or program is shown in the CICS® IA plug-in, you can explore resources further to see which resources the transaction is using and in which regions.

To show the regions in which the program or transaction resource is being used, right-click the resource, then click Uses Resources. You can specify whether to analyze use for a specific region, or for all regions.

Screen capture of the Show Resources view with the pop-up menu

The information about the selected resource and region populates the Uses view.

Select Uses Resources > Specific Region to display the resources used in that region. For each file resource, the file control commands are listed with their function ship data, REMOTE SYSID and REMOTE NAME.
Resources view showing the REMOTE SYSID and REMOTE NAME displayed with the file control commands.
Note: The REMOTE SYSID and REMOTE NAME are not displayed when you select Uses resource > All regions.

When you select Uses Resources, all the resources that are used by this program are displayed, and also all the programs that were loaded from it. The tree of regions shows the resources that were in use by the originating program, and also by the others. When you click the resource, the table displays what programs are using it, and the originating program might not be in this list.

A screen capture of the Uses view that shows a program selected and the populated By Resource pane.
In the previous screen capture, the program TST4CVD2 called TST4CVD3, which used the temporary storage resource.

The program or transaction uses are shown in the Resources used pane, organized into folders by type.

You can use the Group by Verb icon Group by Verb icon in the toolbar of the view to sort the information in the Resources Used pane.

You can sort the results by resource (by default), so each resource node contains all the verbs that were executed against it:

Screen capture of the results in the Resources Used pane sorted by resource
You can also sort the results by verb, which have an arrow icon next to them, so each verb node contains all the Resources that were used by it:
Screen capture of the results in the Resources Used pane sorted by Verb
Verbs in this context are the EXEC CICS commands issued from the CICS API.

The run hierarchy for the current program or transaction starts is shown in the pane.

When you select a resource, the By Resource pane is populated with information about the programs and transactions that use the resource.

When a resource is selected, you can select the points in the run hierarchy where the resource is used, using the Get next item Get next item icon and Get previous item Get previous item icon icons.

Screen capture showing Get next item in execution tree icon
Screen capture showing Get previous item in execution tree icon

When you select a program in the Resources Used pane, the hierarchy shows the first resource in the tree that uses the program.

Screen capture of programs using the resource selected in the Resources Used panel

If you navigate down the tree by using the Get next item icon, you reach the next resource that uses the same program.

Screen capture of programs using the resource selected in the Resources Used panel

Creating an event processing capture specification

You can use the Uses Resources information to create a capture specification to use with event processing. This option is available only for resources and API calls that match valid event processing resources.

To use this option, you must have a CICS Bundle project for the event set up and available for use first. For more information, see Creating a CICS bundle project in the CICS Explorer User Guide.

  1. Right-click a resource with the asterisk icon in the Uses view.
  2. Click Create Event, then select the required event type from the resulting menu. The Create Event Binding from a CICS resource wizard opens.

Events associated with EXEC CICS commands

Events associated with EXEC CICS commands are displayed as child nodes of the command in the view. These child nodes are the events that are triggered against a command. The program used by this event is displayed in the Uses view.

Screen capture of events in Uses view