Customize CICS and IMS monitoring

  • 6-min read

Define additional monitoring settings for CICS and IMS transactions. Go to Settings > Mainframe to find the following menu options:

Transaction monitoring

Define additional monitoring settings for CICS and IMS transactions.

Transaction start filters

Dynatrace traces CICS and IMS transactions when they are called by monitored services. Dynatrace also traces transactions where they are started through a supported protocol by CICS Transaction Gateway, z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition, or IBM MQ (unless they are limited by the IBM MQ filters).

Transactions that start on the mainframe or on a terminal (for example, IBM 3270 green screen terminal), or are called by unmonitored services, need to be explicitly listed in order to be traced.

CICS terminal transaction start filter

To trace CICS transactions that start on a terminal (for example, IBM 3270 green screen terminal), add their transaction IDs to the CICS terminal transaction start filter. You can use the asterisk (*) wildcard. For example, use TN* to trace all transaction IDs that start with TN, or use * to trace all transactions starting on a terminal.

Activate the required OneAgent feature z/OS CICS terminal transaction sensor.

CICS transaction start filter

To trace CICS transactions that start on the mainframe or are called by unmonitored services, add their transaction IDs to the CICS transaction start filter. You can use as a suffix the asterisk (*) wildcard. For example, use TN* to trace all transaction IDs that start with TN.

This sensor ignores transactions that are captured by another sensor at the start of the transaction (CICS Transaction Gateway and z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition, as well as transaction start and DPL requests from other CICS transactions). It interferes with transactions that are recognized later in the chain, so if a listed transaction is called through IBM MQ, SOAP, JSON, HTTP, or the CICS/IMS SDK, a new trace will start for this transaction and it will not be linked to the previous trace.

If you have any transaction IDs listed here that belong to a terminal (for example, IBM 3270 green screen terminal), we recommend that you move them to the CICS terminal transaction start filter list.

In the CICS transaction start filter:

  • You can use an asterisk (*) in the transaction ID suffix, but it can't be only an asterisk.
  • We do not recommend setting transaction ID as C*, as this would capture CICS internal transactions.

IMS terminal transaction start filter

To trace IMS transactions that start on a terminal (for example, IBM 3270 green screen terminal), add their transaction IDs to the IMS terminal transaction start filter. You can use the asterisk (*) wildcard. For example, use TN* to trace all transaction IDs that start with TN, or use * to trace all transactions starting on a terminal.

You need to enable the z/OS IMS terminal transaction sensor OneAgent feature to trace such transactions.

IMS transaction start filter

To trace IMS transactions that start on the mainframe or are called by unmonitored services, add their transaction IDs to the IMS transaction start filter. You can use as a suffix the asterisk (*) wildcard. For example, use TN* to trace all transaction IDs that start with TN.

Unlike the CICS transaction start sensor, the IMS transaction start sensor will not interfere with a trace captured from another sensor (MQ, SOAP, ITRA, IMS Connect, and zOS Connect).

If you have any transaction IDs listed here that belong to a terminal (for example, IBM 3270 green screen terminal), move them to the IMS terminal transaction start filter list.

IBM MQ filters

Dynatrace traces CICS and IMS transactions that originate from IBM MQ queues. To limit tracing to certain queues, specify their names in the include lists. To exclude queues from tracing, specify their names in the exclude lists. For IMS, these lists apply to message processing regions.