CICS Interdependency Analyzer Extension for Zowe Explorer adds additional functionality to the popular VS Code extension, Zowe Explorer. This extension allows users to interact and visualize CICS resources like Regions, Programs, Transactions and Webservices.

CICS IA tool helps with runtime data collection for CICS Application. The CICS IA VS Code extension visualizes the collected data in the form meaningful to the user.

Pre-requisites

Ensure that you meet the following prerequisites before you use the extension:

• Install VSCode 1.93.0 or later versions
• Install Zowe Explorer 2.18.0 or earlier versions
• Install Zowe CICS Explorer 2.3.7 or earlier versions
• REST API preconfigured and running in the mainframe machine. Refer https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6378374 for REST API configuration for CICS IA.

Installation

• Install Zowe Explorer CICS IA Extension from VSIX file.
• After successful Installation of CICS IA Extension, the CICS IA Node should be visible in the Primary Side bar of Zowe Extension Activity bar in VS Code:

Features

• Load profiles directly from ZOWE CICS VS code extension.
• Create new or Update existing Zowe CICS IA profiles and connect to them.
• Identify Collection IDs for which dependency or affinity data has been collected under a CICS IA profile.
• Each Collection ID displays tree hierarchy of CICS resources like Regions, Programs, Transactions and Webservices.
• Filter and display the Programs, Transactions or web services used in a selected region.
• View Resource Utilized by any Transaction, Program or Web service.
• View the tasks in a transaction.
• View the properties of a Program.
• Analyse the interdependencies between CICS Resources.
• Create and view summary or detail report of Threadsafe issues for a specific Program or Transaction or Region.
• Analyse the Transaction and system Affinities for a Transaction/Program and list the details about Program, Transaction and Command causing the affinities.
• View the execution details and timeline of Commands collected by Command flow collector for a selected task.

CICS IA Profile

• By default, CICS IA view loads all the profiles from CICS extension if available.
• After Creating a new CICS Profile refresh CICS IA view, we should be able to see the newly created CICS profile getting loaded under CICS IA view as well.
• The CICS IA tree view should show all the CICS profiles created in CICS Extension.
• Once the IA profile is created, CICS IA connection details must be configured for a successful connection to the REST API server.
• CICS IA view will start loading the data from the DB2 Database (DB2 Schema details are configured in the application server where REST API is running) and creates the tree hierarchy inside the CICS IA Profile.

CICS IA profile on Successful connection extracts the Collected Dependency and Affinity data from the DB2 Schema to which REST API is configured. When CICS IA profile node is expanded, below child items are listed.

Collection IDs: Collected data has been grouped under Collection IDs and is used for analysing the collected data.

User Command Flow: Displays the Command flow runs sorted by User ID.

Reports: Displays the Threadsafe reports which have been generated for a Region, Program, or Transaction

Collection IDs 

The Collection IDs are the collection identifiers for which dependency or affinity data has been collected by CICS IA tool and loaded into DB2.

Hover over the Side bar and expand the CICS IA profile node. List of Collection ID tree items would be displayed under the CICS IA profile tree node. Select the Collection ID that you want to explore.

Expanding a collection ID node, we get to see the Regions, Web Services, Transactions and Programs associated with the Collection ID.

Regions

CICS® region information that is collected by CICS IA is displayed when you expand Regions node under a Collection ID.

Expand Regions node. Right-click the region that you want to explore and choose an option from the menu. Use the menu to display more information about the selected region.

Webservices

The Web Services node displays an alphabetic list of all web services known to CICS® IA Collection ID, both inbound and outbound. Next to Web Services text within brackets, a count of the web services used in the selected collection ID is displayed.

Right-click the web service that you want to analyze to see the resources that it uses and where it is used, either across all regions or for a specific region.

For an inbound web service, you can see the resources that it uses. For an outbound web service, you can see where it was invoked by transaction or program.

Expand Web Services node. Right-click the web service that you want to explore and choose an option from the menu. Use the menu to display more information about the selected web service.

Transactions

The Transactions Node shows an alphabetical list of all transactions known to CICS® IA Collection ID. Next to Transactions text within brackets, a count of the transactions used in the selected collection ID is displayed.

The list of transactions includes the transactions in which programs are running and transactions that are the results of interactions; that is, they are CICS resources of type TRANSID.

Expand Transactions node. Right-click the Transaction that you want to explore and choose an option from the menu. Use the menu to display more information about the selected Transaction.

Programs

The Programs node shows an alphabetical list of all programs known to CICS® IA Collection ID. Next to Programs text within brackets, a count of the Programs used in selected collection ID is displayed.

The list of Programs include:

·        Programs that are the sources of interaction.

·        Programs that make calls into CICS.

·        Programs that are the results of interactions.

·        Programs that are CICS resources of type PROGRAM.

Expand Programs node. Right-click the Program that you want to explore and choose an option from the menu. Use the menu to display more information about the selected Program.

User Command Flow

When you expand User Command Flow Node under CICS IA profile tree Hierarchy, it displays the list of command flow runs which are sorted by user ID.

Hover over the Side bar and expand the CICS IA profile node. Expand the USER COMMAND FLOW node to view the USER IDs for which CICS IA collected command flow data.

To view a command flow that was run by a user, expand the required user ID. You can then expand the command flow to display further information. The time of the first command that is issued, and the transaction task ID are displayed. Before any transaction or program resource can be visualized from the User Command Flow Execution, interdependency data must first be collected for the transaction and loaded into the DB2 table.

Below is a sample Command flow report showing the execution of commands.

Reports

You can expand Reports node under CICS IA profile tree Hierarchy to Open a saved report or file.

Hover over the Side bar and expand the CICS IA profile. Expand the REPORTS node to view saved detail or summary Threadsafe reports.

Below is a sample detail threadsafe report opened from the Reports section using “Open Report” option.

Below is a sample summary threadsafe report opened from the Reports section using “Open Report in Browser” option.

Kasthuri Sekar

Dev Engineer - CICS IA