Problem determination

Application programs that make use of CICS® intercommunication facilities are liable to be subject to error conditions not experienced in single-CICS systems. The new conditions result from the intercommunication component not being able to establish a session with the requested system (for example, the system is not defined to CICS, it is not available, or the session fails).

In addition, some types of request may cause a transaction abend because incorrect data is being passed to the CICS function manager (for instance, the file control program). Where the resource is remote, the function manager is also remote, so the transaction abend is suffered by the remote transaction. This in turn causes the local transaction to be abended with a transaction abend code of ATNI (for communication through VTAM®) or AZI6 (for communication through MRO) rather than the particular code used in abending the remote transaction. However, the remote system sends the local CICS system an error message identifying the reason for the remote failure. This message is sent to the local CSMT destination. Therefore, if an application program uses HANDLE ABEND to continue processing when abends occur while accessing resources, it is unable to do so in the same way when those resources are remote.

Trace and dump facilities are defined in both local and remote CICS systems. When the remote transaction is abended, its CICS transaction dump is available at the remote site to assist in locating the reason for an abend condition.

Applications to be used in conjunction with remote systems should be well tested to minimize the possibility of failing when accessing remote resources. It should be remembered that a "remote test system" can actually reside in the same processor as the local system and so be tested in a single location where the transaction dumps from both systems, and the corresponding trace data, are readily available. The two transactions can be connected through MRO or through the VTAM application-to-application facility.

Detailed sequences and request formats for diagnosis of problems with CICS intercommunication can be found in the the CICS Problem Determination Guide.

Related tasks
Application programming for CICS function shipping
Application programming for CICS DPL
Application programming for asynchronous processing
Application programming for CICS transaction routing
CICS-to-IMS applications
Related reference
Terminology
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