Job generation

Whether or not you use system triggers, you must already have defined actions for various maintenance tasks. (For more information about defining actions, see Maintaining-and-generating-Service-Actions.) For example, you might have defined the following types of actions:

• Statistics maintenance actions
• Copy maintenance actions
• Reorganization maintenance actions

When you use your defined actions with BMCTRIG in response to triggers and exceptions, actions are referred to as corrective actions. You can use corrective actions as follows:

• Without system triggers (command syntax only)

  When you are not using system triggers, you identify the name of the corrective action that you want to have generated in the Default Action field of the BMCTRIG JCL Generation dialog panel. You can specify only one corrective action, which is generated for all exceptions that are identified by that BMCTRIG job.

• With system triggers

  When you use system triggers, you can associate them with specific exceptions, as in the following examples:

  • Associate a statistics corrective action with the BSTATAGE exception to generate a statistics job whenever BMCTRIG encounters this exception.
  • Associate a copy action with copy related exceptions such as DIRTY, COPYAGE, or COPYPEND.
  • Associate reorganization actions with related exceptions such as EXTENTS, SPACE, and PCTCLUS.

  System triggers enable you to choose different corrective actions for different sets of objects, as in the following examples:

  • Use an Online Reorg action for some applications and a Shrlevel None Reorg for other applications.
  • Use a statistics action that updates the DB2 catalog for some applications and one that does not update the catalog for other applications.
  • You can use wildcard patterns, object set names, or specific object names to identify which corrective action to take for specific exceptions.

  Using system triggers enables you to identify all exception situations, but generate work only for specific objects or exceptions. When objects or exceptions that are not defined in the Corrective Actions repository are triggered, BMCTRIG logs them in the Exceptions table and notes them in the report, but does not generate a corrective action.

Duplicate actions

BMCTRIG offers an option for eliminating duplicate actions.

Specify ELIMDUPACTS Y and BMCTRIG eliminates an action if it contains the same services in the same order as another action. The following table shows three example actions:

Example actions for eliminating duplicate actions

In this example, if one object generates all three of the corrective actions and you have specified ELIMDUPACTS Y, BMCTRIG eliminates both actions 1 and 3 for that object. In this case, action 2 contains exactly the same actions with the same syntax as actions 1 and 3. BMCTRIG analyzes each object individually to determine whether duplicate actions exist. When BMCTRIG eliminates an action, you receive an information message.

If BMCTRIG eliminates an action with a higher priority than the remaining action, it raises the priority of the remaining action.

BMCTRIG also provides the ELIMDUPOPTS option, which causes BMCTRIG to eliminate actions if they are functionally duplicated by an inline option of another service. When generating BMCREORG or IBM REORG, BMCTRIG detects inline copy (AMICOPY or FULLCOPY). When generating IBMREORG, BMCTRIG detects inline statistics collection services (BMCSTATS or RUNSTATS). BMCTRIG does not eliminate individual services from an action.

Object-action priorities

Using system triggers also enables you to establish priorities for specific objects when a particular corrective action is initiated.

These object-action priorities are not the same as the priorities for thresholds. The object-action priorities take precedence over the threshold priorities. Object-action priorities allow you to establish work priority for a combination of objects and actions. For example, you can set a lower priority for an application that is already highly-tuned.

BMCTRIG assigns object-action priorities as follows:

• If there is no active exception for the object-exception in the EXCEPTIONS2 table and if the object-action table has an applicable row with a priority, BMCTRIG assigns the object-action priority.

  If there is no active exception for the object-exception in the EXCEPTIONS2 table but the object-action table does not have an applicable row with a priority, BMCTRIG assigns the threshold priority.

• BMCTRIG increments or ages the exception priority by taking the priority in the table and adding the aging number multiplied by the number of days since the exception row was last updated.
• For GROUP YES, the priority of all objects for an action is set to the highest priority of any exception row for all objects with that action. For GROUP NO, the priority of an object-action is the highest priority of an exception row for that object and action. For more information about grouped services, see Grouped services.

For procedures for using object-action priorities, see Defining-system-level-object-action-priorities.

BMCTRIG generates work for the objects and actions that it identifies as follows:

• If any priorities exist or you have specified JCLWLB Y (Workload balancing), BMCTRIG sorts by job, priority, object ID, action name. Otherwise, if you have specified GROUP Y, BMCTRIG sorts by action name and object ID. (By default, BMCTRIG sorts work by object ID and action name).
• BMCTRIG sorts Object IDs by DBID, object type, PSID, and partition number.
• Other rules apply for ordering work or keeping objects together within the same job for workload balancing. See Workload balancing.
• BMCTRIG reorganizes nonpartitioning indexes before their corresponding table space partitions.
• BMCTRIG performs index REBUILDs after performing the corresponding table space recoveries.

Default actions

You can also specify a default corrective action in command syntax (by using the Default Action field of the BMCTRIG JCL Generation dialog panel) for BMCTRIG to use in addition to the Corrective Actions defined in the repository.

You can lookup a Default Action. To lookup an Action for the Default Action field, type a wildcard value and press Enter. The Action List is displayed. Type S in the Act field to select the Action to use for the Default Action and press Enter. The Default Action field is automatically updated with the selected action.

You can use a default action even when SYSTRIGS=F.

When you specify a default action, BMCTRIG generates that action in the following situations:

• For any exception that does not have a corrective action already defined for it in the repository table
• For any object that does not have exceptions and corrective actions defined in the repository