Are you an OMEGAMON for IMS for z/OS user? Check out the IMS Performance Analyzer for z/OS to report transaction and database activity as it relates to application performance, with a level of detail that is industry leading.

IBM OMEGAMON for IMS Application Trace Facility (ATF) provides two levels of recording:

1. Transaction summary information written to the IMS log – transaction response and CPU time broken down into its constituent components: application, DLI, Db2, and MQ
2. Application event detail written to the log stream – each DLI, Db2, and MQ call is recorded with response code, feedback, and IO area

IBM IMS Performance Analyzer (also known as IMS PA) is best known for its comprehensive reporting of the IMS log. What is less known is its reporting of the OMEGAMON ATF summary and detail trace.

IMS PA ATF reporting provides deep-dive IMS application performance analysis, enabling you to understand and diagnose transaction problems in more detail than even before.

Key benefits of using both products together include:

• Measure application performance beyond simple transaction response and CPU time. By understanding exactly where transactions are spending most of their time, this enables you to quickly pinpoint the problem hotspots that need attention
• Understand the impact of Db2 and MQ calls on IMS transaction performance. Now the question can be answered – is the problem in IMS or Db2?
• Investigate a transaction’s application program calls by looking at their response code and IO area. This will assist application developers to debug and tune their IMS applications

Customer scenario:

My web application response time is degrading. The obvious reasons might include: 

1. An increase in transaction volume
2. A recent application change that introduced a problem
3. IMS or Db2 performance getting progressively worse
4. Some other system workload interfering with this critical business application

Solution:

Any of these root causes will have triggered an alert in OMEGAMON for IMS real-time monitoring.

Now we can use IMS Performance Analyzer to determine the root case:

1. Daily IMS PA reporting against the IMS log will provide application workload rate, average response, and CPU time statistics. Compare this to yesterday’s activity or the same day last week. An unexpected transaction volume increase needs reporting to management. Response or CPU time increases need further investigation, and an explanation to management.  
2. Ideally, OMEGAMON for IMS ATF summary recording to the IMS log is continuous. Now you can run the IMS PA ATF summary report. This report will provide a breakdown of transaction performance. Is the problem in my application code, IMS region, IMS database, Db2 database, or MQ messaging? This report will tell you.
3. Finally, you can activate OMEGAMON for IMS ATF detail tracing for a short period. The IMS PA ATF trace reports will allow you to investigate individual application calls, identifying events in your transactions that are not responding correctly or taking too long.
4. Based on this investigation, you are armed with the necessary information to fix the problem or pass it onto a colleague who will appreciate your problem identification triage.

 Here is a sample IMS PA report using OMEGAMON for IMS Application Trace Facility data. Transaction identification and high-level performance information is reported at the top. Individual application events follow, with timings and responses:    

Good news – SSA, KFBA, and IO areas can also be reported by activating the next reporting level.

Also, do you want to visualize IMS performance data in your analytics platform such as Splunk or Elastic? It is easy with IMS performance tools:

Want to find out more about OMEGAMON IMS and IMS PA? Please feel free to email me at jhancy@rocketsoftware.com