The CICS internal trace is a circular buffer in which the oldest trace entries are continuously being overwritten with new entries due to ongoing activity in CICS. If a problem occurs in CICS, trace events relating to recent problems in CICS will persist inside the CICS internal trace for a period before they are eventually overwritten by newer entries. If we are fast enough, we can capture those trace events by taking a copy of the trace table. In C\Prof, this process is called a snapshot.
Tip: Configure your automation tools to automatically trigger a C\Prof snapshot when problems are detected in CICS. For more information, see Automatic problem capture with event-driven snap.
To save the current contents of the CICS internal trace to an auxiliary trace data set using snapshot, complete the following steps:
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On the C\Prof primary option menu, select option 1 Regions.
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Enter line action SN next to the CICS region you wish to snapshot. To snapshot all CICS regions in a group, enter line action SG next to a member of that group.
Note: CICS regions that report no status either cannot be contacted by the C\Prof collection server, or the collection server is offline. In this case, the C\Prof ISPF dialog will attempt to collect data by generating JCL for an ad hoc batch request. For more information, see Ad hoc batch data collection.
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Press Enter to refresh the Region List. If the snapshot was successful, the value in the Status column changes to SNAPPED. The value in the Collected column is also updated to indicate successful data collection from the CICS internal trace. Trace data for a CICS region is written to a new auxiliary trace data set which is registered by C\Prof in a checkpoint data set.
Notes:
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If your request reports a status of ERROR, review the Messages column for more information. If you are unable to resolve the issue using the message, review the collector SYSPRINT output data set for more information. Message codes and associated descriptions can be found in Messages and Codes.
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For deeper snapshot history, increase the size of your CICS internal trace table. For more information, refer to Step 1: Start and configure the CICS internal trace of the C\Prof setup procedure.