CICSTS 4.2 supplementary data areas

Due to processing by IBM, this request was reassigned to have the following updated attributes:
Brand - Servers and Systems Software
Product family - Transaction Processing
Product - CICS Transaction Server

For recording keeping, the previous attributes were:
Brand - WebSphere
Product family - Transaction Processing
Product - CICS Transaction Server

We have no plans to re-introduce the Supplementary Data Areas manual. If there are control blocks whose layouts are essential to allow for customer debugging then a requirement with justification should be submitted and we can consider whether it is appropriate to publish it in the Data Areas manual.

The following response was received from the raiser via the SHARE requirements system:

I was asking for a solution to the problem created when the CICS Supplementary Data Areas was removed from the CICSTS 4.2 information center. This manual was generally available for previous CICSTS versions and CICS system programmers relied on it to solve problems and develop various in-house routines. I was expecting some ideas from IBM which will help CICS system programmers when they have to analyze a CICSTS 4.2 control block formatted with IPCS level 2 (full) dump exit parameter.

One solution might be, for example, a service provided by IBM where a user can ask a specific question when he analyzes a CICS system dump. An example for such an inquiry might be: what is the offset of the field TAS_XM_TRANSACTION_TOKEN within the TASENTRY control block. Another example might be: what is the name and the description of the field at offset xxxx within the wwww control block.

This kind of service will benefit the CICS system programmers community and will indicate to IBM what is the extent of the need to this kind of service. If the answers to these inquiries will be stored at some internet Q&A list (the CICS list or the new CICSTS system for customer requirements at the developerWork RFE site) and available to everyone, the number of these inquiries will be diminished over time. This list will identify the fields needed to analyze a dump and will also help to maintain in-house internal routines. If IBM will be committed to update this list with every new CICSTS version, the users will have an easy way to upgrade CICS and the effort required by IBM to provide this service and maintain this list will be minimal.

This requirement was raised on behalf of the CICS SHARE project. It has been returned to SHARE asking for clarification, ie Are there a few critical dsects that are commonly required to inspect when debugging? It may be possible to publish a few more or improve the dump formatter.