Parts of an SLC

There are multiple components that comprise service level criteria (SLCs).

SLCs contain elements as shown in following list:

Type

Tells what type of SLC it is. There are four types of SLCs:

• Standard - Standard SLCs monitor specific process names, file names, and other criteria. Use standard SLCs when you know the specific item to monitor.
• Wildcard - Wildcard SLCs facilitate the specification of match criteria that can match multiple values, as opposed to one value. When dealing with batch IDs, you can either specify multiple standard SLCs (one per batch ID that might be created), or you can specify one wildcard SLC that uses a wildcard character to match the date and time portion of the batch ID, which varies from batch to batch. To specify monitoring criteria in wildcard groups, you can use the wildcard characters asterisk and question mark, or regular expressions (regex). IBM® Control Center provides an Expression Tester to test wildcard and regular expressions.
• Workflow - Workflow SLCs monitor the flow of related processes or process steps by tracking them as milestones in a workflow.

  For example, a workflow SLC can monitor a transaction that consists of three processes. All three process must finish within three hours of the start of the first process.

  You can use a correlator to associate milestones with an SLC based on a value obtained at runtime.

  For example, if you have two different users (user ID 1 and user ID 2), who initiate two processes (P1 and P2) and those processes must not exceed a duration of 15 minutes, you can correlate them by specifying a correlator value of "submitterid." This correlation enables the engine to ensure that both instances of the workflow were submitted by the same user and that each workflow met, or did not meet, the duration specified. This prevents IBM Control Center from associating user ID 1's second process with user ID 2's first process:

  

• Simple - With simple SLCs, you can create an SLC by answering a few basic questions, specifying values for basic parameters, and giving the SLC a name and description. When you create a simple SLC, all necessary objects to support the SLC, such as rules, actions, and schedules, are also created.
  Note: Do not use simple SLCs for QuickFile.

Schedule

One or more schedules (calendar or duration) can be associated with an SLC that provide the time constraints associated with performance objectives. An SLC with more than one calendar is an SLC group.

Start/End Window Tolerance

The start and end window tolerances determine the size of the monitoring window for each SLC. They can be used to set up a wider monitoring schedule to detect an earlier start or a later end than expected.

• Start Window Tolerance: The number of hours before the expected start of processing to being monitoring.
• End Window Tolerance: The number of hours after the expected end of processing to stop monitoring.

Criteria

Information about processes/file transfers that IBM Control Center is looking for when monitoring performance objectives of monitored servers:

• Process names/batch IDs
• Destination file names
• Submitter /sender mailbox IDs
• Remote servers/recipient mailbox IDs
• Wildcard expressions (wildcard and workflow SLCs only)
• Correlator (workflow SLCs only)
• Fire once (workflow SLCs only)
• Jeopardy message lists (workflow SLCs only)
• Servers or server groups
• Data visibility groups (DVGs)

The following list is criteria that when used indicates to SLCs to monitor for process step start and process step end events that match the criteria that was specified:

• Source file name
• Destination file name
• Process step name
• Sterling B2B Integrator adapter name
• Sterling B2B Integrator adapter type
• Sterling B2B Integrator mailbox path
• Sterling B2B Integrator message name
• Sterling B2B Integrator document name
• Sterling B2B Integrator protocol
• ITX Advanced transaction set ID

SLCs by themselves cannot start actions. For the SLCs you create, check to see whether the built-in rules meet your needs. If they do not, create rules that use SLC event message IDs to trigger the wanted action.