The transaction troubleshooting for the applications is the product’s most valuable feature. Giving the opportunity for those applications to be able to see what's wrong with a transaction and make corrections; giving them the information readily accessible.

At the same time, from a systems end, we use it for taking care of the everyday type of stuff that the applications don't see. We get on and hopefully keep the system up and rolling.

It's an all in one monitoring solution because of the different subsystems we have such as JZ2, MQ, CICS and being the fact that it's an all inclusive and an all single install really helps us out.

• The MVS and JES2 product displays provide very detailed information.
• The REXX API allows for very simple but powerful automation.

I use most of the SMS space management extensively, but also the features that enable me to look at dumps and different dataset allocations to the system, and performance data from the queueing and delays.

I also really appreciated all the work that everybody did to get it functional for JES3, and they continue to do so, even though IBM said they are going to do away with JES3.

I've really appreciated that, as MBS and z/OS have expanded features, SYSVIEW has been right there in step, providing updates and access to those features. It gives the commands the front-end through the product.

• Ease of use
• Ability for system diagnostics

System troubleshooting and diagnostics are the biggest thing for us. We need to make sure our system is up and running and at peak performing. Also, it helps us troubleshoot if something does go wrong that we did not happen to see. 

The MVS commands, because we have a lot of new, inexperienced users on the mainframe who don’t know the commands.

The most valuable thing to us about SYSVIEW is the overall scale of it. They have a lot of jobs with a number of conditions that go into the overall job management. This gives it the ability to scale and deal with various job dependencies.

Actually, all the features are valuable. The product gives deep insight into a z/OS operating system by means of many powerful commands, each of which provides information within seconds. By contrast, using normal system commands would take minutes, or sometimes even hours, to get similar information, if at all. Similarly, there are many powerful commands for modifying a z/OS operating system.

I can emphasize this with the following examples:

1. Instead of using z/OS system commands on a system console in order to get some information from the system or to modify the system, you can use CA SYSVIEW commands to do exactly the same. Compared to a system console these commands provide a tremendously more user-friendly interface to the system and the output is being displayed much more clearly arranged and accessible than console output. This means much more efficiency, e.g. for system operators.

A specific example of this is all the Dynamic Linklist commands you can use to display and modify the MVS linklist concatenation.

2. There are a lot of commands providing system information as well as system modification for which there is no similar native support from z/OS, especially in a case of emergency. This means that, without a product like CA SYSVIEW, you either had to write your own programs providing such information/modification or you even had no chance at all to deal with such a situation. This means high productivity, e.g. for system programmers.

A specific sample for this is the ACTIVITY command with all its line commands you can use to display and modify all running address spaces in various ways, e.g. displaying allocated data sets, active enqueues, task structure, canceling address spaces of even individual tasks.

We're using CA SYSVIEW to monitor performance and availability on the mainframe. We replaced MainView by BMC with it. It was a cost savings for us.

Like a Megamind does, it provides CPU contention batch job information. We are looking more for our kicks regions and stuff, which it self discovers, then they have some work to do. However, it has been very valuable so far.

The areas which it covers, CICS and DB2, are primarily the best for identifying problems which need to be resolved.

The CICS option is used very frequently. For myself, I mostly use the z/OS part. I also really like the XSYSTEM functions in case I'm having trouble logging on to an LPAR.

Almost all of the features are valuable but specifically z/OS (base), CICS, IMS and MQ.

The TCP/IP feature is used a little, and the CAPTURE feature occasionally, helping a lot when dealing with some issues.

CICS, JES, and MVS aren't necessarily valuable, just very useful. SYSVIEW provides information that supports our duties in problem alerts, problem investigation, and performance monitoring and management.

It is easy to see if anything is wrong. The queues on the system are fast, and it is very intuitive to locate something.

As a system programmer I can see deep into the system, where nearly everything is at, so it's a very good tool for us to use.

• Easy Install
• One consistent interface for all components
• Many interfaces (VTAM, TSO, ISPF, Batch)
• Relatively easy to learn
• Interoperation with CA-OPS

I really appreciate that actions can be triggered by thresholds. For example, when a threshold is reached, a job can be launched without having to use triglevel, capevent or another option.

Many SYSVIEW users have ceased manually performing functions.

Many sectors of IT appreciate and use the MVS display phase.

Our data center uses this as the main product for mainframe system monitoring for hundreds of clients. The integration of CA OPS/MVS to alter and automate the action by threshold setup is the most valuable feature of this product.

Only the base feature is used.

Being able to see and to have oversight of everything that happens on the job is critical, and this is what we get with SYSVIEW.

• Job degradation and analysis

We find the predictive analytics to be the most valuable feature. We are using this a lot with CA Workload Automation iDASH and it is really making a difference for everyone involved.

A lot of what I use it for is compiling and debugging, and I think it’s beautiful. It lets me know what went wrong with jobs that I've run for testing.

The CICS and DATACOM optional components are the most valuable.