Using dumps in problem determination

You have the choice of two different types of CICS® dump to help you with problem determination. They are the transaction dump, of transaction-related storage areas, and the CICS system dump, of the entire CICS region.

The type of dump to use for problem determination depends on the nature of the problem. In practice, the system dump is often more useful, because it contains more information than the transaction dump. You can be reasonably confident that the system dump has captured all the evidence you need to solve your problem, but it is possible that the transaction dump might have missed some important information.

The amount of CICS system dump data that you could get is potentially very large, but that need not be a problem. You can leave the data on the system dump data set, or keep a copy of it, and format it selectively as you require.

You can control the dump actions taken by CICS, and also what information the dump output contains. There are two aspects to controlling dump action:

For information about using dumps to solve FEPI problems, see FEPI dumps.

Related Concepts
Where dumps are written
Events that can cause dumps to be taken
CICS dumping in a sysplex
The dump code options you can specify
Dump table statistics
The CSFE ZCQTRACE facility

Related Tasks
Setting up the dumping environment
Enabling system dumps for some CICS messages
Dumping a CFDT list structure
Dumping a named counter list structure
Dumping a shared temporary storage list structure
Formatting and interpreting dumps

Related References
The transaction dump table
The system dump table
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