Event Monitor

You can use the UCXEM25 Event Monitor tool to monitor Jobs, CONS, and FILE events and forward them to the Automation Engine via the Agent. You can react to them through Event objects. This requires the Event Monitor to be installed and active on each LPAR that you use. The events are collected based on SMF records through an SMF Exit which buffers events even if the Event Monitor is not available. The collected events are passed on to the Event Monitor as soon as it has started again.

This page includes the following:

Prerequisites

The Event Monitor UCXEM25 must be installed and started. For more information, see Installing the Agent for z/OS.

Note: The only event that you can use without the Event Monitor is the periodic File event that has the Frequency settings defined in its Time Parameters section. It is monitored by the Agent. See FILE Events

Event Monitor as Started Task

You can use the Event Monitor as a started task. For this purpose, you need a separate INI file for the z/OS Event Monitor

When you start the Event Monitor as a started task, it tries to establish a TCP/IP connection to the Agent. The Event Monitor only connects to the Console of its own LPAR. It loads the SMF Exit to use the SMF-based functions. If it is not possible to establish a connection to the Agent, or if the connection is lost during the operation, an attempt to re-establish the connection is made in the specified interval. Check the connect= parameter in the section TCP/IP in the INI file for this purpose.

Note: The Console command MODIFY ..., EX=<addr>,:<port> allows you to reconnect quickly because the system tries to reconnect to the specified Agent immediately. A connection is also established if the Event Monitor has an existing connection to another Agent. A new connection is established in this case. The old connection ends when the new connection is successfully established.

The Event Monitor supports logging and trace functions. If the trace settings of the Agent are dynamically modified at runtime, these modifications are sent to the Event Monitor. The Event Monitor's log information is not written to the AE database. See also Advanced Options - Tracing

Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) file

Each Event Monitor needs a VSAM file because transfer information for every dataset and/or file is stored as a record in the VSAM dataset. This file serves as an event memory that stores the event definitions and the filtered triggered events. The Event Monitor will only delete this data when the Automation Engine acknowledges that the event was processed. This ensures that no event is lost in the Event Monitor and that the data is still available even in the situation that the Event Monitor ends or has to be restarted.

SMF Exit

  • An Event Monitor forwards events to the Automation Engine only when it is active. The SMF Exit stores them if the Event Monitor ends or aborts to ensure that no event is lost. For details, see System Management Facility (SMF) Exit
  • Use the GET_CONSOLE, GET_EVENT_INFO script element to obtain message data of an occurred CONS or FILE event

See also: