Finding where a program check occurred

When a transaction abends with code ASRA or ASRD, the first thing you need to do is find out where the program check occurred. CICS® will have attempted to establish this for you. A record of the program in error and the offset of the program check within the program load module are contained in the following places:

See Interpreting transaction dumps.

The offset indicates the point in the program at which the program check occurred. Note that the offset is derived from the PSW next sequential instruction address and so may indicate the instruction after the one that failed. Unless the offset is X'FFFFFFFF', turn to What type of program check occurred?.

If the offset appears as X'FFFFFFFF', CICS was unable to establish the location of the program check. If this is the case, use the PSW to obtain the next sequential instruction address. The PSW may be found in the following places:

Now note down the start and end addresses of the different program areas in the transaction dump. Is the next sequential instruction address from the PSW in any of the programs? If so, then that is the program in which the interrupt occurred. Use the procedure described in Locating the last command or statement to identify the last command executed.

If the address is outside all of the programs, one of two things is likely to have happened.

Check the register contents to see whether any of them contains the next sequential instruction address from the PSW, or something close to it. This might help you find out how you got to the wrong address.

If the PSW does point to an instruction in one of your programs, the next thing to consider is the type of program check that occurred. Otherwise, turn directly to Analyzing the problem further.

Related concepts
Transaction abend codes -- AICA, ASRA, ASRB, ASRD and AEYD
What type of program check occurred?
What the abend code can tell you
Program check and abend tracing
Related tasks
Formatting transaction dumps
Selecting tracing by transaction
Related references
Worksheet for transaction abends
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