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Status Not under consideration
Categories Runtime
Created by Guest
Created on Apr 26, 2016

Redevelop CICS Auxiliary Trace Utility to write to a Logstream and to trace tasks at a more granular level.

While running an auxiliary trace to capture data to assist Threadsafe analysis for a transaction that typically performs some 30000-40000 DB2 calls we saw very high levels of IO that appeared to elongate the response times of the transaction fifty fold and eventually triggered a series of events that caused the region in which the transaction was running to become unresponsive.

1. IBM believe we may have reached an architectural limit, which would seem to be imposed by the the extremely old BSAM Access Method underpinning the CICS auxiliary trace utility. Could this be redesined to use a Logstream that would better serve tracing in today's CICS regions that can service up to 2000 tasks and around 4000 Open TCBs -- at CICS TS 5.1?
2. It would also be extremely useful if CETR were made more granular by providing an additional option whereby a single instance of a transaction could be traced ie a single task. In a region exploiting OTE many instances of a task can be captured very quickly causing large volumes of trace data to be recorded before the trace can be stopped.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
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    Jul 4, 2016

    We have assessed this requirement. We have no current plans for this to be implemented and so this requirement is being declined at this point. The requirement will be kept in the RFE system and might be reassessed in the future. You also have an opportunity to resubmit in twelve months time if you wish it to be reconsidered then.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    May 5, 2016

    Yes I have considered this. However, as the trace table is limited to 1 GIG, this will very quickly wrap. One trace where we captured just five instances of a single transactions tracing only 6 components, exceeded this in a couple of minutes. However, had these transactions been traced internally and assuming no increase in response time as seen in the auxiliary trace, they would have exceeded this limit in about ten seconds.

    Also would be concerned about the effect of a one GIG trace table on the region's working set size. Have IBM any performance metrics on this aspect?

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Apr 27, 2016

    As an alternative to Aux Trace have you considered that because you have moved to CICS TS 5.1 from CICS TS V3, you can take advantage of an enhancement made in CICS TS 4.2, namely that the CICS internal trace table is above the bar. You can define a very large trace table, run the transactions take and then take a dump and print off the trace section. The overhead of internal trace is much less than aux trace..