Welcome
Overview of the CICS® Interdependency Analyzer
This section gives an overview of the CICS® Interdependency Analyzer (CICS IA), and describes its components.
CICS® IA affinity related functions
The affinity related functions of CICS® IA help users of CICS dynamic routing, who need to determine whether any of the transactions in their CICS applications use programming techniques that require them to be run in the same region thus creating an inter-transaction affinity, or in a particular region, thus creating a transaction-system affinity. Application programmers can use CICS IA to detect whether the programs they are developing are likely to cause transaction affinities.
What are transaction affinities?
CICS® transactions use many different techniques to pass data from one to another. Some techniques require that the transactions exchanging data must execute in the same CICS region, and therefore impose restrictions on the dynamic routing of transactions. If transactions exchange data in ways that impose such restrictions, an affinity exists between them.
Transaction system affinity
A transaction system affinity is an affinity between a transaction and a particular CICS® region, it is not an affinity between transactions. It is caused by the transaction interrogating or changing the properties of the CICS region.

Preface
This information describes the IBM® CICS® Interdependency Analyzer for z/OS®. It explains what the program does and how to set up and run its various components.
What's new in CICS® IA Version 6.3
CICS® IA Version 6.3 maintains broad functionality and provides full support for the new CICS Transaction Server 6.3. Building on previous releases, it includes updates for commands whose threadsafe status has been enhanced in CICS Transaction Server 6.3, enabling more applications to run without switching to QR TCB mode
Overview of the CICS® Interdependency Analyzer
This section gives an overview of the CICS® Interdependency Analyzer (CICS IA), and describes its components.
- CICS® IA requirements
  Requirements for running CICS® IA.
- CICS® IA interdependency functions
  CICS® IA assists in understanding, in a controlled manner, the inter relationships between the shared common resources of applications and services.
- CICS® IA affinity related functions
  The affinity related functions of CICS® IA help users of CICS dynamic routing, who need to determine whether any of the transactions in their CICS applications use programming techniques that require them to be run in the same region thus creating an inter-transaction affinity, or in a particular region, thus creating a transaction-system affinity. Application programmers can use CICS IA to detect whether the programs they are developing are likely to cause transaction affinities.
  - What are transaction affinities?
    CICS® transactions use many different techniques to pass data from one to another. Some techniques require that the transactions exchanging data must execute in the same CICS region, and therefore impose restrictions on the dynamic routing of transactions. If transactions exchange data in ways that impose such restrictions, an affinity exists between them.
    - Inter transaction affinity
      An inter transaction affinity is an affinity between two or more CICS® transactions. It is caused by the transactions using techniques to pass information between one another, or to synchronize activity between one another, in a way that requires the transactions to execute in the same CICS region.
    - Transaction system affinity
      A transaction system affinity is an affinity between a transaction and a particular CICS® region, it is not an affinity between transactions. It is caused by the transaction interrogating or changing the properties of the CICS region.
    - Affinity relations
      When a transaction is associated with an affinity, the affinity relation determines how the dynamic routing program selects a target region for an instance of the transaction.
    - Affinity lifetimes
      The affinity lifetime determines when the affinity is ended.
  - CICS® IA affinity-related components
    The figure shows how the affinity-related components of CICS® IA relate to each other.
  - Affinity-related commands
    This section lists the affinity-related EXEC CICS® commands detected by the Collector and the Load Module Scanner. All commands listed here are capable of causing affinities; they might or might not actually do so.
- CICS® IA Command Flow functions
  The CICS® IA Command Flow utility allows individual users to capture CICS, IBM® Db2®, MQ and IMS® commands in a chronological order for one or more transactions. Each user can capture information for his or her given transaction or transactions. They can also individually load and view the data that they have captured.
- The Collector component
  You can use the Collector in real-time to detect transaction resource definitions and transaction affinities in a running CICS® region.
- The Dependency database objects
  The Dependency database objects contain accumulated data about all your programs and transactions and the resources that they use.
- The Affinity database objects
  The Affinity database objects contain accumulated data about all your programs and transactions and the affinities between them.
- The CICS® IA plug-in for CICS Explorer®
  The CICS® IA plug-in for CICS Explorer® (CICS IA plug-in) is an Eclipse plug-in that operates on top of the CICS Explorer to help you analyze the CICS IA data, including the interdependency data, affinity data, and Command Flow data. When you install the CICS IA plug-in for CICS Explorer there is help available on how to use the CICS IA plug-in, Help > Help Contents > CICS IA User Plug-in guide.
- CICS® IA reports
  CICS® IA can create dependency reports, affinity reports and threadsafe reports by running batch jobs.
- The Scanner component
  The Scanner component consists of two scanners: the Load Module Scanner and the CSECT Scanner.
- The Builder component
  The Builder is a batch utility that takes as input a file of basic affinity-transaction-group definitions created by the Reporter. It produces a file of combined affinity-transaction-group definitions suitable for input to CICSPlex SM.
Getting Started with the CICS® IA plug-in for CICS Explorer®
The CICS® Interdependency Analyzer plug-in for CICS Explorer® provides an Eclipse-based interface to analyze your CICS IA data. It also provides cheat sheets that guide you through the steps required to configure and install CICS IA. It is recommended that you download the CICS IA plug-in and follow the steps in the cheat sheets.
Configuring CICS® IA
This section describes what you need to do before you can use CICS® IA.
Running the Collector
You run the CICS® IA Collector to look for instances of program commands that might cause resource dependencies or transaction affinities.
Updating the Dependency and Affinity database objects
The Dependency database objects contain accumulated data about your applications and the resources that they use. Update the database objects regularly to add new information recorded by the Collector in the VSAM dependency files.
Managing your CICS® IA data
With each new release CICS® IA captures more data. In volatile development environments this data can soon become out of date. If you have out of date data, the CICS IA plug-in might retrieve more data than you need. The presence of unwanted data might impede your analysis and provide confusing results.
The CICS® IA UDB database
CICS® IA provides jobs to unload CICS IA data into CSV files. These files can be used to populate the IBM® supported UDB databases.
Running the Reporter
Running the Program Threadsafe report
The threadsafe report can be run from the CICS IA Explorer plug-in or as a batch job using the sample CIUJTSQ2 that can be found in SCIUSAMP.CICS. The report runs the Db2® stored procedure CIUSPTSR.
Running the Load Module Scanner
The Load Module Scanner scans load modules for instances of program commands that could cause resource dependencies or transaction affinities.
Running the CSECT Scanner
The CICS® IA CSECT Scanner scans load modules for information that can be used to identify the version of each CSECT.
Running the Builder
The CICS® IA Builder runs as a batch job to build affinity-transaction-group definitions suitable for input to the CICS system management product, CICSPlex SM.
Running the sample Db2® query
This section describes how to run the sample CICS® IA batch query job CIUJSAMP.
Solving problems
This section helps you to isolate and determine the cause of CICS® IA problems.
Details of dependencies and affinities collected
Correlating Load Module Scanner and Dependency Reporter output to source
The structure of the CICS® IA database
Messages and codes
This section describes the messages that the Collector, Query interface, Dependency Reporter, Affinities Reporter, Load Module Scanner, CSECT Scanner, and Builder can issue, and the transaction abend codes that the Collector can produce.
CICS® IA space considerations
CICS® IA security
CICS® IA External Interfaces
The Appendix describes available Stored Procedures and Command Flow user exit.
Collecting dynamic COBOL calls
CICS® IA detects dynamic COBOL calls, which are collected by the Dependency and Command Flow Data collectors.
Accessibility
Accessibility features help a user who has a physical disability, such as restricted mobility or limited vision, to use software products successfully
Download PDF
Download the PDF format documentation for CICS Interdependency Analyzer for z/OS 6.3

Transaction system affinity

A transaction system affinity is an affinity between a transaction and a particular CICS® region, it is not an affinity between transactions. It is caused by the transaction interrogating or changing the properties of the CICS® region.

Transactions with an affinity to a particular CICS® region, rather than to another transaction, are not eligible for dynamic transaction routing. Typically, they are transactions that use CICS® SPI commands, such as EXEC CICS INQUIRE or SET, or that depend on global user exit programs.