Welcome
Diagnosing the causes of abends
You can determine the cause of a CICS® VR abend in a number of ways.
Reading a dump
Each abend category involves different methods of locating the BIB (BEX Interface Block), and the name and the compilation date of the failing CSECT.
Trace information
CICS® VR maintains an internal trace table to help you follow the order in which the CICS VR modules are invoked before an abend.

What's new in CICS VR 6.3
CICS® VR 6.3 contains these changes.
Operating environment
CICS® VR uses logs to recover your VSAM data.
CICS VR Overview
Getting Started
CICS® VR and CICS® TS
CICS VR Exits
Running CICS® VR forward recovery
CICS® VR forward recovery consists of a restore and then forward recovery.
Running CICS® VR backup
The information in the following topics describe how to take a backup using CICS® VR. The panels and secondary windows are in the sequence that they are displayed during a backup job generation.
Running CICS® VR reorganization
You can reorganize a VSAM sphere using CICS® VR. VSAM sphere reorganization can increase the space of a sphere and its alternate indexes. It can also change the control interval sizes for a sphere's components.
Working with other VSAM sphere list pull-down menus
The CICS® VR recovery and backup functions are typically accessed using the Utilities pull-down menu after selecting VSAM spheres.
Working with CICS® Backout Failed spheres
The CICS® Backout Failed sphere list shows the CICS spheres registered for manual recovery or reorganization after CICS notification of a backout failure.
Working with logs
Using ISMF data set lists with CICS® VR
CICS® VR is integrated with ISMF so that you can create a CICS VR recovery job for the data sets in an ISMF data set list by entering the VSAMREC line operator or list command. When you enter the VSAMREC line operator or list command, the necessary CICS VR panels are called and you can create a recovery job for the VSAM sphere.
Running CICS® VR manually
IBM® recommends that you use the CICS® VR panel interface to create recovery jobs for your VSAM spheres. Using the CICS VR panel interface eliminates the need for you to manually keep track of daily update activity, logs, backups, etc. Also, the CICS VR panel interface automatically creates the recovery JCL for you.
Running CICS® VR batch backout
The CICS® VR batch backout utility allows you to remove updates that were made to KSDS, ESDS, RRDS, and VRRDS VSAM spheres by steps in a batch job. This section describes how to run the CICS VR batch backout utility.
Understanding CICS® VR reports
The CICS® VR forward recovery and batch backout utilities produce a set of reports upon successful completion. The reports are written to the data set allocated to the DWWPRINT ddname. However, the set of reports written for the forward recovery backout utilities differ from the set of reports written for the batch backout utilities.
Understanding IBM® program support
The IBM® Customer Engineering Program Support structure helps you resolve problems with IBM products, and ensures that you can make the best use of your IBM computing systems.
Problem determination procedures
If you have to contact IBM® personnel about a CICS® VR problem, you must classify and describe the problem.
Diagnosing the causes of abends
You can determine the cause of a CICS® VR abend in a number of ways.
- Classifying the type of ABEND
  You can classify abend codes into three categories: system abends, user abend 3999, and user abends 3000 to 3033.
- Locating a dump or diagnostic file
  You can locate a dump or a diagnostic file using trace tables and diagnosis files. The system dump is the only source of information for system abends and program checks.
- Reading a dump
  Each abend category involves different methods of locating the BIB (BEX Interface Block), and the name and the compilation date of the failing CSECT.
  - Finding the CSECT
    After system abends and program checks, it is useful to find the failing CSECT to locate the failing module..
  - Diagnosis file and user ABEND 3999
    Use the diagnosis file to find the name of the failing CSECT.
  - Other user ABENDs
    With other user abends, the failing instruction is not useful in locating the failing CSECT because the module that detects the error condition, the CICS® VR abend-service module, then calls a lower-level routine. Use this procedure to locate the failing module.
  - Trace information
    CICS® VR maintains an internal trace table to help you follow the order in which the CICS VR modules are invoked before an abend.
Reference information
The reference sections of the information contain reference information that you need when you use CICS® VR.
Glossary
The terms in this glossary are defined as they pertain to the CICS VSAM Recovery documentation.
Edition notice
This is the information for CICS VSAM Recovery for z/OS. It applies to CICS VSAM Recovery for z/OS Version 6.3, and to all subsequent versions, releases, and modifications until otherwise indicated in new editions. Make sure you are using the correct edition for the level of the product.
Download PDF
Download the PDF format documentation for CICS VSAM Recovery for z/OS 6.3

Trace information

CICS® VR maintains an internal trace table to help you follow the order in which the CICS® VR modules are invoked before an abend.

The trace is wraparound, with this end mark after the last trace entry:

   ****************

Each entry consists of these two 8-byte character strings:

Module name field
Reason field

A trace entry with reason PROLOG is added on entry to the module. An entry with reason EPILOG® is added at exit from the module.

When the dump is online in machine-readable format, you find the trace table by scanning the dump and searching for one of these fields:

****************
PROLOG
EPILOG®

Alternatively, you find the address of the trace table, and its end mark, in the BIB block of CICS® VR. You find the address of the trace table at offset X'440' in the BIB, and the address of the end-of-trace mark at offset X'448'.