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Diagnosing CICS TG connection problems using the CICS Explorer

Technical Blog Post


Abstract

Diagnosing CICS TG connection problems using the CICS Explorer

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One of the problems that administrators hear from their users is that either a CICS Transaction Gateway (CICS TG) is not available, or the CICS server is returning errors. Having a quick way to confirm or deny these problems can be of great benefit and fortunately the CICS TG plug-in for the CICS Explorer provides such functionality.

 

From the Gateways view you can right click on any of the Gateway daemons and from the menu select 'Test Gateway Connection'.

 

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This will then attempt to connect to the Gateway daemon using the configuration from the PH_SPORTTCP and PH_SBINDTCP statistics. Information about whether the connection was successful or not is written to the Console tab.

 

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Once you know that the Gateway daemon is available you're then able to test whether the configured connections to CICS are available. Right click on the server definitions you want to test and from the pop-up menu and select 'Test CICS Connection'.

 

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This will cause an ECIRequest to be sent to the selected CICS server, and will by default call the PONG program from the CH50 SupportPac, however this can be changed in the preferences page.

 

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Again the response from this request is displayed in the Console tab.

 

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If both these tests pass then it should be safe to assume that any problems are either in the client application or between the application and the Gateway daemon. Any failure in the tests will be reported in the Explorer and should provide a starting point for diagnosing the problem.

 

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ibm11080831