Using CICS trace for problem determination

CICS® provides a tracing facility that enables you to trace transactions through the CICS components as well as through your own programs. You can either define the tracing levels at system initialization or use a CICS supplied transaction to define tracing when CICS is running.

If you want to define tracing when CICS is running, use the CETR transaction. This transaction is described in the CICS Supplied Transactions manual.

  1. Use the CETR transaction to run level 1 auxiliary tracing for the BTS domains. BTS consists of three CICS domains: the Business application manager domain, the Event manager domain, and the Scheduler services domain. You can trace what is happening in BTS using the component codes for these domains to specify the level of standard and special tracing for BTS. For detailed information about using component codes to set the level of tracing, see the CICS Problem Determination Guide. The component codes are:
    Domain name CICS component code
    Business application manager BA
    Event manager EM
    Scheduler services SH
    This will provide you with information about the BTS processes and activities that are running in the CICS region.
  2. Use the CETR transaction to run level 1 auxiliary tracing for the following domains:
    • AP - application programming domain
    • PG - program manager domain
    This will provide you with information about the programs that are running and the contents of the BTS data-containers.
  3. If you are having problems with Web services in particular, use the CETR transaction to run level 1 auxiliary tracing for the PI domain. This will trace what is happening in the pipeline when a service requester invokes an adapter service from a Web service, or if an adapter service makes an outbound Web service request.