SYSVIEW Performance Intelligence Reviews

We use it to control everything that's going on in the system. It's a very good tool to use for a system programmer and for a normal programmer.

As a system programmer I can see deep into the system, where nearly everything is at, so it's a very good tool for us to use.

It's quicker to get information, it saves time.

From the demo I attended it looks like all the features I would want are coming.

Very good, no downtime.

It's very good.

I haven't used technical support for SYSVIEW but I have used CA support and it's very good.

We were using SDS from IBM. We switched because SYSVIEW is a better product.

Straightforward.

You have this and you have SDS from IBM. You can compare the two products. We have an agreement with CA so we took SYSVIEW and it's good.

When selecting a vendor it comes down to the price.

I would recommend SYSVIEW. Use it.

SYSVIEW has numerous uses. There are so many different things:

• CICS transactions
• CPU utilizations
• TSO users.

It performs exactly as we have it customized. We have never had a problem with it. It is always well-maintained and it does everything we ask for it to do.

It is easy to navigate through. It has a lot of features and functions to it, so people can do their jobs. 

I never had a problem with it whatsoever. It is 100% always up.

I have never had a problem with it.

Same as always with CA. They are on top of things. I have never had an issue.

It was straightforward. There is really no additional customization from one version to the next. It is really easy. It is not a very difficult product to install and customize. 

I do the installation and the customization of it. I also maintain it and keep it up-to-date.

SYSVIEW has everything you need.

Only the base feature is used.

It provides much more info regarding the mainframe and interfaces, with ease of use (menus); has many more options available compared to the previous product.

Perhaps the CPU usage: When SYSVIEW is accessed via VTAM, the CPU usage is higher than compared to when its accessed via TSO using exactly the same commands, e.g., Display active tasks.

I have used it for 12 years.

As mentioned, we did have issues with high CPU usage when accessed directly via VTAM but overcame it when accessed via TSO.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is professional and very efficient.

We previously used a different solution. The main reason we switched was the cost saving but it also provided much more functionality.

Initial setup was fairly straightforward.

I’m not sure about pricing but we have numerous CA products with an overall pricing and license.

We evaluated COMPLETE and OMEGAMON.

Do not hesitate; it’s invaluable.

• Job degradation and analysis

It gives an indication of potential performance bottlenecks.

The screen layout could be updated and be more modern looking.

The product has a 1980’s interface and it seems no investment whatsoever has been made in this respect.

It’s a green texted screen, the navigation is poor because you can’t use the cursor for selection.

Exiting the product does not allow for the standard ‘=x’ instruction. You have to Pf3 all the way out.

Great product...terrible looking interface

I have used it for 12 years.

Sometimes in split screen, it can crash.

We have not encountered any scalability problems.

Technical support is fairly good.

We have MainView but SYSVIEW is better for z/OS internals.

It was simple to install.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options.

Do it.

• The MVS and JES2 product displays provide very detailed information.
• The REXX API allows for very simple but powerful automation.

It has benefited our organization by the automatic JES2 spool cleanup based on multiple filter criteria.

I would like to see better web browser support that display views, reports, and graphs. Currently, we use the IBM 3270 interface.

It would be nice if we could access the data and display it in a more “modern” way. I think there is some web client offered via the Vantage product. It is unclear to me what possibilities this client offers, as I do not have Vantage installed.

I would like to have a web client which supports all SYSVIEW functions and graphical dashboards. Perhaps this would enable us to export the data directly into an Excel format. After all, graphical displays on an IBM 3270 are not that great.

We have used it for over 10 years, although we stopped using it for a period of time due to a management issue.

We have not encountered any issues with stability.

We have not encountered any issues with scalability.

Technical support is very good.

We used MainView from BMC.

The installation was straightforward.

I only select the best products to use in the company. I am not involved in the final price negotiations.

We evaluated MainView and OMEGAMON.

If you are looking for a good performance monitoring and system tool, this solution offers it in a very compact product suite.

Actually, all the features are valuable. The product gives deep insight into a z/OS operating system by means of many powerful commands, each of which provides information within seconds. By contrast, using normal system commands would take minutes, or sometimes even hours, to get similar information, if at all. Similarly, there are many powerful commands for modifying a z/OS operating system.

I can emphasize this with the following examples:

1. Instead of using z/OS system commands on a system console in order to get some information from the system or to modify the system, you can use CA SYSVIEW commands to do exactly the same. Compared to a system console these commands provide a tremendously more user-friendly interface to the system and the output is being displayed much more clearly arranged and accessible than console output. This means much more efficiency, e.g. for system operators.

A specific example of this is all the Dynamic Linklist commands you can use to display and modify the MVS linklist concatenation.

2. There are a lot of commands providing system information as well as system modification for which there is no similar native support from z/OS, especially in a case of emergency. This means that, without a product like CA SYSVIEW, you either had to write your own programs providing such information/modification or you even had no chance at all to deal with such a situation. This means high productivity, e.g. for system programmers.

A specific sample for this is the ACTIVITY command with all its line commands you can use to display and modify all running address spaces in various ways, e.g. displaying allocated data sets, active enqueues, task structure, canceling address spaces of even individual tasks.

Several times it saved us tens of thousands of Euros by tremendously reducing the time necessary to solve a severe operating system problem.

As with every piece of software, there’s always room for improvement. But for our shop, the most important features of the product have been working perfectly for a very long time.

As for the JES2 component of the product, CA might improve the overall performance when accessing the JES2 spool. I do know that CA is using system interfaces from IBM to get the JES2 data, and I suspect that the actual room for improvement is in that interface. Maybe CA cannot do very much to improve performance, but it would be great to get better performance in this area.

We have been using this solution since 1993.

There are rarely stability issues, just minor issues when they do occur.

There have been no scalability issues.

In the 90s, the European first-level support was sort of lukewarm. This changed positively with the beginning of this century, and it still persists.

We had a previous solution, and we switched because CA SYSVIEW was clearly superior.

The installation was, and still is, straightforward, provided that you are a moderately experienced z/OS systems programmer.

The only additional candidate then was OMEGAMON from IBM.

A great deal of the product is definitely suitable for z/OS system specialists with some years of job experience. In other words, z/OS beginners will probably not be able to appreciate all of the product’s features. Thus, it should be evaluated by an experienced systems programmer.

• Easy Install
• One consistent interface for all components
• Many interfaces (VTAM, TSO, ISPF, Batch)
• Relatively easy to learn
• Interoperation with CA-OPS

• It's easier to diagnose problems, and find solutions
• Interoperability with CA-OPS allows for more automation.

Better historical reporting.

At least 10 years.

No.

No.

No.

Excellent. No problem with asking How-To questions.

Excellent.

No.

Relatively simple.

In House.

We used TMON before.

We're using CA SYSVIEW to monitor performance and availability on the mainframe. We replaced MainView by BMC with it. It was a cost savings for us.

It integrates very nicely with other products from CA, like OPS/MVS, and it's easy to learn.

There are some parity features, things you can do in a JES2 or JES3 shop, which you can't with CA SYSVIEW. For example, purge output from the spool. So better parity between JES would be useful.

It has been very stable. We've only been using it for a couple months, but we haven't had any problems with it.

We're a pretty small shop, so I'm sure we can scale it up to what we need it to do.

Technical support is very good. They get back to us very quickly and usually have a very good answer. Even if it's one I don't want to hear, but they're good about that.

We previously used MainView from BMC. Our contract was up for renewal, and the sales lady offered CA SYSVIEW as part of the contract renewal. The pitch was cost savings, and it was priced better, so we went with that.

For us, vendor is general. It's mainly the product that we care about, but cost is definitely in there. This does pretty much the same thing that MainView does at a cheaper cost. That's why it won.

I installed CA SYSVIEW. The actual product install is very simple. The web interface install is far from easy. The manual isn't very straightforward on that at all because it's pieces of a different product. Installing it on web interfaces was a challenge.

We didn’t evaluate any alternatives for this product.

Just take your time and set thresholds and alerts properly.