Start-Stop messages in XML extended to CICS regions (Debug Tool)

Debug Tool has the feature of recording information for start and end events for debugging sessions. These messages are written in a sequential file in XML format. They could be processed by a customer application to have the scenario of who is using Debug Tool, in which environment (batch, IMS, CICS, TSO) and when the sessions took place. This option is activated by a parameter in EQAOPTS module - STARTSTOPMSG. To have the messages written in a file, the parameter STARTSTOPMSGDSN should be coded.

With these two parameters set, Debug Tool records a message in XML file for each start of a debugging session, with date, time, environment and userid. The tag SEQUN has a unique id for the session, that makes easy the concatenation of the start event and stop event. This works for all environments (TSO, BATCHTSO, IMS, BATCH) except for CICS.

For CICS, Debug Tool just writes the message EQA4037I for the start of a session and the message EQA4038I for the end of a session, in plain text, in the JES log for CICS region, without the time/date information. This makes the use of these messages very difficult, since an application needs to browse the entire sysout to find the messages, catching date and time from other JES messages to have the complete information, besides the fact that there is no link to be done between the start and stop messages for one debugging session.

The enhancement required is to have Debug Tool having the same behavior for these messages under CICS as it has for other environments. Or, in other words, Debug Tool under CICS writing the start and stop messages in the file, with the same format (XML) with the same information.

The file could be the same as for other environments or, if concurrency is a problem, a special file to be used by DT under CICS.

Also, for code coverage sessions, the information need to be recorded also. A special tag could be added to indicate that the session is either a CodeCoverage session or a Debugging Session or both.