FEPI trace

Start of changeThere are appropriate trace entries in the CICS® trace table which are under the control of the usual CICS mechanisms. FEPI trace entries are listed in the CICS Trace Entries manual.End of change

FEPI generates exception and event trace entries--the latter under control of the ‘SZ’ component code. Points AP 1200 through AP 16FF are reserved for use by FEPI, although not all of these are used.

Taking trace entries

You control the taking of FEPI trace entries with the CETR SZ transaction, or the SET TRACETYPE SZ command. FEPI supports only one level of tracing--either all or nothing. At CICS initialization, you can specify the default levels of standard and special tracing by means of the STNTR, SPCTR, STNTRSZ, and SPCTRSZ system initialization parameters, which are described in the CICS System Definition Guide. Exception trace entries are always taken.

You can use the selection features of the CETR transaction to limit tracing to specific transactions. This is described in the CICS Supplied Transactions manual. If you do this, you can control the tracing of application programs, but the FEPI Resource Manager, running as the CSZI transaction, is unaffected, because trace selection is applied only at transaction start.

If you are using DFHTRAP under the guidance of IBM® support, note that the FEPI Resource Manager runs under the SZ TCB. Therefore, do not do anything that could force an MVS™ task switch to any other TCB.

Interpreting FEPI trace entries

The first thing to consider is whether there are any exception trace entries. Their presence indicates that a problem has been detected, and (perhaps) that the appropriate action has been taken. Exception trace entries are either initialization errors or storage management errors.

Initialization errors result from checks made when CSZI starts, to prevent a second instance of the FEPI Resource Manager. Storage errors result from GETMAIN or FREEMAIN errors, and are usually caused by a lack of CICS storage.

The other trace entries are the usual module entry and exit traces, together with a few points indicating that important processing events have occurred (such as the FEPI Resource Manager becoming idle).

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