Real-time analysis

Real-time analysis occurs when an application abends and Fault Analyzer is invoked through one of the supplied invocation exits (see Exits for invoking Fault Analyzer), or a call to the program SNAP interface is made, and the job has not been excluded from analysis.

Generally, real-time analysis produces two things:
  • A report, which is written to JES by default (see The real-time analysis report).
  • A fault entry in a history file, which provides the ability to perform reanalysis of the fault.

    A copy of the report that is written to JES is also included in the fault entry, and can be viewed from the ISPF interface. You cannot change the report by setting options to different values at the time you view it. If you want to look at more (or less) detail, you must reanalyze the fault with adjusted options or a supplied listing or side file.

This step is the first step in the fault analysis process. In most cases, the analysis is deemed satisfactory, and you do not need to reanalyze the fault.

For a particular job you can adjust some options before you run the job.

All virtual storage pages that were referenced during the analysis in the abending task's address space are written to the history file as a minidump, or to an associated XDUMP, depending on the storage content. If the number of storage pages destined for the minidump exceeds the MaxMinidumpPages option in effect, then neither a minidump nor an XDUMP is written.

LOADER restriction: Fault Analyzer does not work correctly if using the LOADER (IEWBLDGO) since the load-and-go technique of link-editing modules does not write them to a data set. The data set copy of the load module is needed in order to determine CSECT names, lengths, and starting offsets.