Enabling, disabling, and reading journals

Journal records are written to a log stream either directly from a user application program, or from a CICS® management program on behalf of a user application. Journal records can be written from a user application using the EXEC CICS WRITE JOURNALNAME command. For programming information about the EXEC CICS WRITE JOURNALNAME command, see the CICS Application Programming Reference manual.

This section describes the commands that you use for enabling and disabling journals, and for reading journals offline.

Enabling and disabling a journal

To enable or disable a journal from an application program, use the EXEC CICS SET JOURNALNAME command. For programming information about the EXEC CICS SET JOURNALNAME command, see the CICS System Programming Reference manual.

Reading journal records offline

Access to journaled data in log streams is provided through an MVS™ subsystem interface (SSI), LOGR. Your existing user programs can read the general log streams, providing you specify, in your batch job JCL, the SUBSYS parameter and supporting options on the DD for log streams. By specifying the LOGR subsystem name on the SUBSYS parameter, you enable LOGR to intercept data set open and read requests at the SSI, and convert them into log stream accesses.

Depending on the options specified on the SUBSYS parameter, general log stream journal records are presented either:

CICS system log records are only available in the CICS Transaction Server for z/OS format, so you must ensure that any utilities that handled system log records in releases prior to CICS Transaction Server for OS/390, Version 1 Release 1 are converted to handle this format.

Journal records can be read offline by user-written programs. You can generate the DSECTs that such programs need by including certain statements in the program code, as follows:

The following section describes the structure of CICS Transaction Server for z/OS-formatted journal records. The structure and content of CICS/ESA 4.1-format journal records are described in Structure and content of COMPAT41-format journal records.

Related concepts
The CICS log manager
Log stream storage
Related reference
Structure and content of CICS Transaction Server for z/OS format journal records
Structure and content of COMPAT41-format journal records
Format of journal records written to SMF
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