IMS Trace Facility

You can use the IMS Trace facility to write IMS trace tables internally or to an external trace data set.

IMS can write this external trace data set to either DASD or tape:

• DASD data sets can be allocated by JCL or can be dynamically allocated.
• Tape data sets must be dynamically allocated.

You can also write the trace tables to the OLDS, but this could adversely affect OLDS performance. The external trace data sets are independent of the OLDS, so you can write trace tables to the external trace data sets even if the OLDS is unavailable.

To display the status of traces, use the /DISPLAY TRACE command. This command can be used to determine the status of the IMS traces in effect and the status of any external trace data sets in use.