SmartMode Administration

SmartMode administration is accomplished through the use of an interactive FOCUS window application called Smart/SAF (SmartMode System Administrator Facility). This section introduces you to using Smart/SAF. Smart/SAF's functions are described in greater detail later in this manual.

In this section: How SmartMode Works Using Smart/SAF Smart/SAF Warnings When Starting SmartMode for the First Time How Reentrancy Affects Implementation of Updates The Usage Monitor Setting Rule Parameters With SmartMode Building Rules Creating Custom Rules Reporting With SmartMode

How SmartMode Works

SmartMode monitors request activity, logging the attributes of each request and storing them in a usage-monitoring database. Once an adequate amount of usage monitoring data has been collected, you can run SmartMode's reports, which illustrate various aspects of request activity at your site. The process of choosing resource thresholds and building governing rules can then begin. Resource thresholds must be set before you can build data rules. You can then create shifts, which facilitate the application of date and time restrictions. Once those limits have been set, you can begin to build rules upon which data access will be governed.

At times, you may encounter certain conditions contained in requests that should never be allowed to run. In other cases, you may know that all queries should be allowed to run, such as those submitted by a user with greater privileges. On these occasions, you can create custom rules to check for these kinds of conditions in order to generate cancellation messages, or allow beyond-threshold queries to run. When using custom rules only, the selection of resource thresholds is not required. All data sources can be governed by data rules or custom rules.

Using Smart/SAF

To run Smart/SAF, type the following at the FOCUS prompt:

EX SMARTSAF

The Smart/SAF main menu appears:

The following table provides a summary of the Smart/SAF main menu options.

Main Menu Option	Description
Database control	Directs you to the Database control menu, which enables you to control the following for each database: usage monitoring, custom rules, rule induction and compilation, governing, and Usage Monitoring database maintenance. For more information, see Usage Monitoring, and Governing.
Reports	Directs you to the Reports menu for running, viewing, and printing reports about your site's request activity. For more information, see Governing.
Setup information	Directs you to the Setup information menu for configuring Usage Monitoring in your system, shift schedules, and thresholds. For details, see Usage Monitoring.
TSO command	Enables you to exit to TSO while still in the Smart/SAF session.
Exit Smart/SAF	Leaves Smart/SAF and returns to FOCUS. You can also exit Smart/SAF by pressing the PF3 key. When you exit Smart/SAF, the following message displays: Smart/SAF has been exited. Type FIN and press the Enter key to exit FOCUS.

Smart/SAF Warnings When Starting SmartMode for the First Time

Once SmartMode has been installed at your site, it is started automatically for any user who starts FOCUS. The first time a user starts Smart/SAF, the main menu may be preceded by the following warning message:

WARNING!  (SU error message)

WARNING! (SU Error Message)

This warning is a Simultaneous Usage (SU) error message. If the SmartMode SU job is not running when you start Smart/SAF, the following message displays:

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   Smart/SAF      |                       WARNING!                    |
|------------------|---------------------------------------------------|
|    PF3 - EXIT    |                     ENTER - Continue              |
|------------------|---------------------------------------------------|
|    Sink ID:      |                                                   |
|                  | The sink machine is not running. In order to run  |
|    XXXXXXXX      | SmartMode the sink machine must be running. Review|
|                  | the Simultaneous Usage Reference Manual.          |
|    Return Code:  |                                                   |
|                  |                                                   |
|        16        |                                                   |
+------------------+---------------------------------------------------+

Smart/SAF requires the SmartMode SU job (also called the sink machine) that you identify during installation, to be running. For more information about SU, see Installing SmartMode for FOCUS VM, or the Simultaneous Usage for OS/390 and MVS User's Manual.

How Reentrancy Affects Implementation of Updates

The Usage Monitoring databases and the knowledge bases are loaded only once during a session. Therefore, when you make changes to the Usage Monitoring databases, which happen automatically when settings are changed in Smart/SAF, or in any rule file that has already been loaded, users must exit and reenter their applications for the changes to take effect.

While building the Usage Monitoring databases, rule files, and using the reentrant option for MSO, FOCUS must be recycled to force loading the new modules from the SMARTLIB data set.

The Usage Monitor

Before SmartMode can monitor request information, it must know your monitoring requirements. You specify these requirements to the Usage Monitor through Smart/SAF, the SmartMode Administrator. The usage monitoring requirements are stored in SmartMode's control table (SMCNTRL) and a text file called GKTABLE is built from the control table. SmartMode consults GKTABLE to determine which requests to monitor during application processing.

SmartMode allows you to control which kinds of requests are monitored. You can enable monitoring of TABLE and SQL commands online in an interactive FOCUS session, or from an executing FOCEXEC. This is true for batch processing as well.

The following list describes the steps in the SmartMode monitoring process:

1. When a user issues a TABLE request, FOCUS calls the Usage Monitor right before it retrieves the first record for the request.

2. The Usage Monitor consults GKTABLE to determine if the request should be monitored, based on the defined monitoring configurations.

3. The Usage Monitor captures the request attributes and stores them until the request finishes retrieving data.

4. The Usage Monitor is called once more to gather resource usage statistics, and all the logged information is stored in the Usage Monitoring databases.

Setting Rule Parameters With SmartMode

Before SmartMode creates the rules that establish limits on the amount of resources each request can use, you need to provide information about permissible resource thresholds at your site and the shifts that control requests made by end users. SmartMode uses these thresholds and shifts along with the already collected usage monitoring data to build rules about how requests are to be governed against specific data sources. Based on these rules, the SmartMode governing facility decides if a request can execute or not.

Building Rules

Before SmartMode can begin governing queries, you must first generate the rules that are used. The rules generated by SmartMode are based on usage monitoring data and the kinds of requests that have been monitored before governing is turned on. When a request is issued, SmartMode looks at the request and uses the rules to determine whether the request should be permitted to run.

Creating Custom Rules

You may, however, know of certain conditions contained in requests that should never be allowed to run. If these conditions do not occur during the representative sampling of your site's applications, they will not become part of the automated SmartMode's rules. Likewise, you may know of certain conditions under which all queries should be allowed to run, such as a user ID with greater privileges. Custom rules enable SmartMode to govern immediately on conditions that are known to be unacceptable or that should never be cancelled. It also allows you to designate more specific parameters beyond simply the time, IO, and row number thresholds specified in the thresholds view.

For example, you can have SmartMode govern based on the particular data source being queried, the user ID submitting the request, or even a particular field within the request. Custom rules allow for flexibility upon configuration of SmartMode or changing Information System conditions at your site. SmartMode uses its proprietary Business Rule Language (BRL) when building rules.

Reporting With SmartMode

SmartMode offers several types of reports, which provide a summary of monitored data, a log of cancelled requests, and rules.

The following table lists and describes the reports you can execute.

Report Name	Report Description
Monitored Samples Summary	Shows a report summary of all monitored requests.
Monitor/Governor Status	Shows data sources with monitoring and governing settings.
Summary Reports	Allows you to choose what report you see based on user ID, request, database, or monitor/governor activity.
Setup Information	Allows one or more reports of administrative settings on global collection, number of monitored sources, or shift and threshold information.
View Rules	List rules that have been built in the current system based on historical monitored data or custom rules.