Absence of data dictionaries

Two symptoms occur when data dictionaries are absent.

The first, and most common, symptom is a message indicating that data records were encountered before dictionary records. This might be due either to an error in the CMF data or a user-related error. You can cause this error when copying CMF records from one data set to another. When copying CMF records, make sure that the dictionary records are copied along with the data records and appear before their associated data records. If the data set was not copied, the missing or misplaced dictionaries might be caused by an error in CMF.

Note: When CICS® writes to an MVS™ SMF data set, CICS does not get notified that a data set switch has occurred and cannot write the dictionaries at the beginning of the new data set. It is necessary that SMF data sets be processed in the same order in which they were created.

The second symptom is the occurrence of numerous error messages. These messages tell you that CICS PA was unable to find the indicated data field. This happens when the dictionaries are lost and is due to improper link edit of the dictionary processor, ECPDICMF.