Maintaining the RCDS

Throughout various CICS® VR processes, CICS® VR verifies the consistency and availability of the RCDSs. Any damaged or unusable RCDS are reported by CICS® VR in a message.

For example, CICS® VR might issue message DWW1605I indicating that an RCDS is full.

Upon notification of a damaged or unusable RCDS, corrective action must be taken. While CICS® VR recommends creating and using three RCDSs for a CICS® VR XCF group, it can temporarily run with only one or two RCDSs allocated without affecting any production activity. Therefore, if you are notified that one or two of the RCDSs are damaged or unusable, you can take the following corrective action without terminating the CICS® VR server address space and affecting production activity:
  1. Deallocate the damaged or unusable RCDS from the CICS® VR server address space.
    An RCDS can be deallocated from the CICS® VR server address space by issuing the following operator command: 
    VARY SMS,CICSVR,RCDS(ddname),DELETE
    Where ddname is the ddname the CICS® VR server address space allocated the RCDS as (DWWCON1, DWWCON2, or DWWCON3).
    Note:
    In some cases, CICS® VR automatically deallocates an unusable RCDS, therefore making this step unnecessary. CICS® VR writes messages to the operator console when an RCDS is found to be unaccessible, full, etc. Also, CICS® VR writes messages to the operator console when it dynamically deallocates an RCDS that is found to be full or broken.
  2. Repair the damaged RCDS.

    In most cases, as long as there is one existing RCDS that is correct and undamaged, it might be easiest to simply delete the damaged RCDS and redefine it. CICS® VR can automatically refill an empty RCDS.

  3. Reallocate the repaired RCDS to the CICS® VR server address space.
    An RCDS can be reallocated to the CICS® VR server address space by issuing the following operator command: 
    VARY SMS,CICSVR,RCDS(ddname),ADD
    Where ddname is the ddname the CICS® VR server address space uses to allocate the RCDS as (DWWCON1, DWWCON2, or DWWCON3). CICS® VR uses the RCDS naming convention when attempting to reallocate an RCDS to the CICS® VR server address space.

    When an RCDS is allocated to the CICS® VR server address space, CICS® VR verifies that its contents are consistent with the other allocated RCDSs. If an RCDS is found to be outdated or empty, CICS® VR automatically adds the missing information into the empty or outdated RCDS.