New in this release

Version 4 release 1 of Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS includes a number of enhancements to its Tivoli Enterprise Portal features.

New CICS SLA view helps you ensure SLA compliance

A new Tivoli Enterprise Portal alternative view, the CICS SLA view, has been added with this release. Using it you can define workload-performance thresholds with which you can monitor your CICS transactions to ensure they comply with your site's service-level agreements (SLAs). You define such thresholds using three new CICS-specific portal objects: service policies, workloads, and service classes. The CICS SLA view lets you create these objects and activate them so your site can monitor its SLA compliance using the Service Level Analysis workspace.

This new feature incorporates all the function previously provided by the Candle® Management Workstation's Workload Definitions icon. For detailed information, including implementation steps, see Alternative view CICS SLA.

Dynamic workspace links support transfers into other OMEGAMON products

Dynamic, runtime workspace links have been added to these CICS workspaces to allow you to transfer to these products' workspaces for additional analysis of CICS monitoring data:

All these links function only if the target product is both installed and running when you invoke the link. In addition, if there are no matching filtering criteria, the link icon either does not show or shows grayed out.

Note:
Dynamic links from a Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS V4.1 workspace to an OMEGAMON XE V3.1 product function as long as the target workspace exists, although you may notice some behavioral changes. For example, the 3.1 version of the Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for DB2 on z/OS product's Detailed Thread Exception workspace does not filter the data; hence, if you link to this workspace from the Transaction Analysis workspace, all threads are displayed. If the target workspace does not exist in the V3.1 product, you will receive error KFWITM081E.

New Web Services Analysis workspaces analyze WWW intercommunication

With the new Web Services Analysis workspace, you can determine the status of the various aspects of Web-based program-to-program interactions with your CICS regions. Should your site experience problems connecting its CICS applications to business functions using the Worldwide Web, this workspace helps you ensure that all necessary Web services are defined and available.

This workspace comprises four reports:

In addition, these workspaces can be reached via the Document Template Details report to help you investigate the CICS resources associated with your Web services' document templates:

Enhanced Exit Program Analysis workspace provides additional user exit information

The Exit Program Analysis workspace has been enhanced to provide additional information about CICS Global User Exits (GLUEs) and Task-Related User Exits (TRUEs) running in your environment. Two new subsidiary workspaces have been added to retrieve this detailed information:

To support this new workspace, two new attribute groups have been added:

Split workspaces enhance TEP performance

To reduce the amount of data shipped to the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server, workspaces have been split into summary and details versions: you initially retrieve a summary report of the resources and then drill down into a details workspace of a selected resource as required. The affected views are:

Corbaserver Summary report
Has been added, along with a Corbaserver Details workspace.
Document Template Summary report
Has been added, along with a Document Template Details workspace.
Pipeline Summary report
Has been added, along with a Pipeline Details workspace.
Request Model Summary report
Has been added, along with a Request Model Details workspace.
URIMAP Summary report
Has been added, along with a URIMAP Details workspace.
Web Services Summary report
Has been added, along with a Web Services Details workspace.

Transient Data Queues workspace enhanced

The Transient Data Queues workspace in Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS was designed to implement CICS exceptions as situations. As such the data displayed is limited to that required by these exceptions. To make the Transient Data Queues report more useful, a subset of the fields provided by the CUA interface within Tivoli OMEGAMON II for CICS has been added.

In addition, three new Take Action commands for the deletion of transient data now allow situations to purge entries from a transient data or temporary storage queue; these are:

Note:
The following Take Action command was added to allow you or a situation to pass a WTO message, in mixed case and with Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS attribute values substituted, to the system operator: Sample WTO message issued by a command or situation.

Security enhanced for Take Action commands

Security for the native OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS Take Action commands (those prefixed by CP:) is now determined by a special set of security profiles. This includes all commands that the Tivoli Enterprise Portal passes directly to CICS TS for execution: AIDK, ICEK, SET, TDDL, TSQD, and WTO.

Note:
Security for z/OS console commands (for example, CEMT and CEKL commands passed to CICS TS via the Modify command) is still controlled by the general Take Action security your site set up via Netview.

However,

Support for the aggregation and pruning enhancements in TDW

The Tivoli Data Warehouse (TDW), the piece of the ™ framework where Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS stores monitoring data for historical analysis, has been enhanced to support new data aggregation and pruning capabilities. With these new features, historical data can be summarized and rolled up into aggregate values while removing detail data that is no longer needed. These Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS attribute groups—for which historical data can be stored and retrieved—have been enhanced to exploit these new capabilities:

Note:
This enhancement may change the look and feel of the historical data within Tivoli Enterprise Portal.