Reports, Cobol affinities, Logon or system when pconv expected – IBM Transaction Server OS User Manual

Page 91: Unrecognized transids

Appendix C. Useful tips when analyzing Transaction Affinities
Utility reports

Sometimes the report produced by the Reporter from data gathered from the
Detector can contain some results that appear odd at first glance. This appendix
gives tips for resolving such results.

COBOL affinities

If an application program is invoked using the native CALL statement, CICS COBOL
run-time code issues an EXEC CICS LOAD HOLD for the program and branches to
it directly. This causes affinity only if the program is not reentrant; that is, if it
modifies itself. Otherwise, there is no affinity.

CICS COBOL run-time code writes data to a TS queue if an abnormal termination
occurs. The TS queue name used is “CEBR” plus the termid of the terminal, or
blanks if there is no terminal. This does not cause affinity.

LOGON or SYSTEM when PCONV expected

When dealing with an application that is known to use TS queues within a
pseudoconversation, but never beyond, there may be occurrences in the report of
affinity groups that appear as LUNAME/SYSTEM or LUNAME/LOGON, instead of
the expected LUNAME/PCONV.

A SYSTEM lifetime can be explained if the installation uses a session manager
that logs users off after a pre-determined quiet time. When the log off occurs in
the middle of a pseudoconversation, the Transaction Affinities Utility notices that
the TS queue still exists, and increases the lifetime to SYSTEM.

A LOGON lifetime can be explained by the user switching off the terminal in the
middle of a pseudoconversation and causing a VTAM® line error. This causes an
error transaction to be attached internally at the terminal. The affinity utility
program notices that the TS queue exists at the end of that transaction, and
increases the lifetime to LOGON.

In both these circumstances the real lifetime is PCONV, because, although the TS
queue exists at the end of the pseudoconversation, the data in it will never be used
again. Normally the first action of a new pseudoconversation is to delete the
contents of all such TS queues for that terminal to ensure that everything is tidy.

Unrecognized Transids

Transids that consist of garbage data are reported in the Transaction Affinities Utility
report. Such transids are not known to CICS, and most contain the same
hexadecimal data. This is probably caused by a bug in an application that causes
the EIB to be overwritten.