Designed specifically for z/OS systems, FreezeFrame is a performance analysis solution that pinpoints application problems through detailed observation and provides comprehensive system information to help you find the cause of the badly performing code.
As every CIO knows, customer service expectations continue to rise while mainframe IT budgets are coming under increasing pressure. That makes it imperative to keep your business-critical z/OS applications performing at the highest level and minimize their use of costly processor capacity.
FreezeFrame uses observation sessions to measure how system resources are used by applications in the z/OS Sysplex environment. During a session, FreezeFrame can sample activity in any target address space at any frequency and duration, resulting in a series of snapshots that map observed system states to system objects. These snapshots are then aggregated to produce performance analysis reports which provide a meaningful picture of how resources are consumed and highlight slow or improperly running programs.
FreezeFrame can be used on its own or in combination with ExpeTune, which identifies candidates for observation by FreezeFrame and provides expert tuning guidance.
Support for mixed environments
FreezeFrame measures programs running in batch and under CICS, IMS, Java JVM, WebSphere Application Server and ADABAS environments, and can extract details of calls to CICS, Db2, IMS and WebSphereMQ.
Flexible scheduling
Observations can be started manually, scheduled for a specific time or triggered by reaching a threshold such as a specified CPU time; CICS transaction monitoring can also be initiated by ExpeTune if a transaction exceeds its threshold execution time.
Low-impact performance measurement
During an observation session, FreezeFrame's non-intrusive Stealth Sampling Technology records system activity without slowing it down, as the measurement engine never schedules I/O or any other task in the target address space.
Pinpoint accuracy
Variable sampling times and frequency provide a detailed picture of how resources are consumed that identifies all performance issues.
Db2 and SQL activity monitoring
Badly performing SQL can cause the most serious performance problems; FreezeFrame monitors all Db2 SQL requests in an observation and provides full reporting of the Db2 SQL activity.
Flexible reporting
Users can view performance analysis reports online and drill down to progressive levels of detail; this makes reporting clear and easy to understand; reports can also be printed, or run in batch.
Source program mapping
Many reports can be mapped onto application program source listings to determine which specific lines of code are causing performance problems.
Eclipse and 3270 access
Native and Eclipse interfaces can be used interchangeably to provide flexible user access.