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Training Course Summary:

On completion, this course will provide the following skills:


Describes the internal structure of CICS/TS, including the domain structure.

Provides the student with step by step procedures for solving a variety of CICS abends and failures.

Background on why and how failure situations can occur is examined.

How failures are internally handled and how the user can participate in abend processing are discussed.

Control Blocks and internal logic for specific failures are presented.

Transaction dumps and system dumps are investigated.

Dump reading skills are honed.

Dumps and Workshops are provided.

IPCS is also taught so that students become familiar with this product.

Recovery Manager, RRMS and UOW's are explained together with DFH Log and DFH Shunts.

Pre-Requisites:

Systems Programmers with at least six months CICS experience and a basic knowledge of CICS Internals.
Application Programmers with a minimum of nine months CICS programming experience.

Who Should Attend:

System programmers and technical support staff responsible for supporting a CICS system.
CICS application programmers who are responsible for reading their own CICS dumps.

Training Course Overview/Content:

Introduction
Students are introduced to the "external symptoms" that may be evident when a system or transaction dump is created. New CICS messages and codes, no response-waits and system recovery are discussed in detail. Types of dumps, using IPCS and the relevant CICS control blocks (DTAs/TXNs/SMXs/TCAs) are outlined. Transaction Definition changes - runaway vs. ICUR, TRANCLAS vs TCLASS and CMXTLIM vs PURGETHRESH

Recursive Abends
Task logical levels (PLCBS), abend exits and link control blocks are discussed in the context of recursive abends. The new lay out of a dump is analysed checking Program Status Word (PSW), program entry and load points and short symptom string. COBOL and COBOL II compile listings are reviewed with emphasis on condensed listings, TGT, BL, BLW BLL, working storage and linkage. Methods for solving recursive ASRA's are investigated. Program definition autoinstall is discussed.

Storage Violation
Storage Manager Domain (SM) functions are reviewed. Subpools, SAAs, LSCZ, STORAGE PROTECTION, Transaction Isolation, ERDSA, RDSA, Page Allocation Maps (PAM), Storage Element Descriptors, Free Storage Descriptors and EXECKEYS are described. Ways in which storage may be violated are investigated. Violations are solved and traced back to the source coding error. Storage acquisition by CICS modules is examined. Using the Storage Trap is discussed. New DSA management techniques (Extents/Page Segment Tables) are investigated.

Deadly Embraces
Resources and insuring integrity are discussed. Tasks in the system are examined. The dispatcher domain (DS) summary is investigated and resource types and names explained. The use of Enqueues and possible problems are investigated. Resources management including VSAM Strings, Local Shared Resources (LSR), Control Intervals (CIs), and Logging is covered. Temporary Storage is discussed.

Traces
The use of Traces and the Trace Domain (TR) are reviewed. Activating tracing through CETR and the types of tracing, for example Standard or Special, Component Tracing, Internal/Auxiliary or GTF traces, are examined. The four different trace styles are explained, i.e. Level Two Tracing is investigated with the new VERBEXIT keyword TRS.

Domains
The Kernel Domain Task Summary is explained. Evidence from the summary is tracked through to the Storage Manager Domain Summary. The Kernel Error Data Report is investigated. The Kernel Linkage Stack Entries are reviewed together with Kernel Domain and subroutine calls. The transaction manager and the dispatcher domain are examined. The dump domain and dump table are discussed. Program Manager Domain, Directory Domain and the roles played by Application Domain and Transaction Manager.

Recovery Manager/Log Manager
Management of tasks in a distributed environment through UOW IP's. The new commands are discussed. RRM's in the EXCL Environment.

Initialisation And Shutdown
The Initialisation process is discussed. The PLTPI is reviewed. Types of Shut Down and the problems that may be encountered are discussed.

IPCS
Formatting SDUMPS using IPCS is discussed.