Dumps are an important source of detailed information about problems.
Whether they are the result of an abend or a user request, dumps allow you to see a snapshot of what was happening in CICS® at the moment the dump is taken. However, because they do provide a snapshot, you might need to use them in conjunction with other sources of information relating to a longer period of time, such as logs, traces, and statistics.
For information about the dump formatting keywords used to extract BTS information from a CICS system dump, see the CICS Problem Determination Guide.