Diagnosing an abnormal termination of an ODBA program

If your program does not run correctly when you are testing it or when it is running, you need to isolate the problem. The problem might be anything from a programming error (for example, an error in the way you coded one of your requests) to a system problem.

You can check for the following errors when your program fails to run, terminates abnormally, or gives incorrect results.

ODBA initialization errors

Before your program receives control, IMS must have correctly loaded and initialized the PSB and DBDs used by your application program. Often, when the problem is in this area, you need a system programmer or DBA (or your equivalent specialist) to fix the problem. One thing you can do is to find out if there have been any recent changes to the DBDs, PSB, and the control blocks that they generate.

ODBA running errors

If you do not have any initialization errors, check the following in your program:

  1. The output from the compiler. Make sure that all error messages have been resolved.
  2. The output from the binder:
    • Are all external references resolved?
    • Have all necessary modules been included?
    • Was the language interface module correctly included?
  3. Your JCL. Is the information that described the files that contain the databases correct? If not, check with your DBA.