Using IPCS to format and analyze CICS system dumps: Overview

z/OS® interactive problem control system (IPCS) provides z/OS installations with an interactive facility for diagnosing software failures. z/OS SDUMPs can be produced by CICS® or by using the z/OS DUMP command. You can use z/OS IPCS to format and analyze these SDUMPs or to analyze stand-alone dumps obtained when CICS was active in the system being dumped. You can view the dumps at your terminal or you can print them.

About this task

The z/OS IPCS dump analysis subcommands enable you to perform the following diagnostic actions:
  • Examine the data in a dump.
  • Locate and verify control blocks associated with certain functions or system components.
  • Trace and verify chains of control blocks.
  • Perform contention analysis on key z/OS resources.
  • Locate modules and unit control blocks (UCBs).
  • Execute user-written exits for certain control blocks.
  • Keep a list of the names and locations of control blocks and areas of dump that you consider important.
To enable you to format, print, and analyze CICS SDUMPs written to dump data sets, you can use the IPCS VERBEXIT subcommand to execute a CICS-supplied IPCS dump exit. You must specify the CICS dump exit parameters on the VERBEXIT subcommand, using the verb name for the CICS release that produced the dump data. This dump exit enables you to:
  • Process a dump selectively by specifying one or more CICS component keywords as parameters to the exit.
  • Process trace entries selectively that are recorded in the CICS internal trace table, to format for a system dump.

The CICS dump exit can be used in either a batch job or interactively. For an example of a batch IPCS job, see Figure 2 in Sample jobs to process a CICS SDUMP using the CICS dump exit. For examples of how you interact with z/OS IPCS, see Formatting system dumps.

For further information about z/OS IPCS, see the following information: