Collecting the documentation for the APAR

As a general rule, the documentation you need to submit for an APAR includes all the material you need yourself to perform problem determination. Some of the documentation is common to all CICS® problems, and some is specific to particular types of problem.

Make sure the problem you have described can be seen in the documentation you send. If the problem has ambiguous symptoms, you need to reveal the sequence of events leading up to the failure. Tracing is valuable in this respect, but you might be able to provide details that trace cannot give. You are encouraged to annotate your documentation, if your annotation is legible and if it does not cover up vital information. You can highlight data in any hard copy you send, using transparent highlighting markers. You can also write notes in the margins, preferably using a red pen so that the notes are not overlooked.

Finally, note that if you send too little documentation, or if it is unreadable, the change team will return the APAR marked "insufficient documentation". It is, therefore, worthwhile preparing your documentation carefully and sending everything relevant to the problem.

The general documentation is described in General documentation needed for all problems with CICS. However, these are only guidelines--you must find out from the support center precisely what documentation you need to send for your specific problem.

General documentation needed for all problems with CICS

The following is a list of the general documentation you might be asked to submit for an APAR:

Related Concepts
The APAR process

Related Tasks
Sending the documentation to the change team
Applying the fix
Dealing with the Support Center
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