Make it simpler to turn on SMF data collection

MQ for z/OS Idea – Make it easier to turn on data collection

For years it has been traditionally difficult to turn on the various levels of SMF data gathering. For example, when writing our data collection for MQ on z/OS there are 4 pages of instructions, longer than Db2s which is asking for more different kinds of data. I have been thru the instructions multiple times with customers and too often find that am still missing specific queue data for a number of queues because they or their models are delivered with accounting and monitoring turned off. This makes figuring out which of the millions of tasks captured are not showing the full compliment of queues used. We try using the ‘other’ counts that show up – but those can be many different types of activity, and we need to know which queues are in use. This is likely to be a carry over based on the past costs of gathering this critical information and to allow customers more flexibility in their data gathering. However, it often prevents those of us in various roles that need to look at this data from getting a complete picture.

Checking every queue for the correct settings is also cumbersome for our customers. Getting customers to change individual queue and channel setting when we are trying to chase down a problem is time consuming and often painful. Especially if they have very strict change control, as they should.

My suggestion is simple, change the queue manager/chinit level (ZPRM) settings to include option of ‘gather all accounting’ or ‘gather all statistics’ or ‘gather everything’ - overriding individual queue and channel level settings. We would get far more compliance and it would be easier for customers to understand. The default should be ‘gather all statistics.’