Tracing

Client daemon tracing is a useful problem determination tool for communication problems. You can use the trace functions to collect detailed information on the execution of a certain function or transaction. A trace can show how the execution of a particular activity is affected by, for example, the execution of other tasks in a CICS® system. Each trace entry has a time stamp, which provides information on the time taken to perform certain activities.

To learn how to turn tracing on, see Starting client tracing.

For information on specifying the components of the Client daemon to be traced, see the cicscli -m command.

The output from the trace function is a binary trace file called, by default, cicscli.bin in the <install_path>\bin subdirectory. You can specify a different name for this file, using the Configuration Tool. However, you cannot change the .BIN extension. Using the Client trace file wrap size (KB) configuration setting, you can specify that the binary trace file should wrap into a second trace file, and you can also specify the maximum size of these files.

To read the trace, run the cicsftrc utility to convert the binary file or files into a text file. This text file is called cicscli.trc by default. The default trace files are:
cicscli.bin
The binary trace file produced by running the Client daemon trace.
cicscli.wrp
The second binary trace file if wrapping of client trace is enabled.
cicscli.trc
The name of the text trace file produced when the binary trace file is converted to a text file using the cicsftrc utility.
cicscli.bak
The backup file of the binary trace file. A backup file is produced from any existing .BIN file when you turn tracing on.
cicscli.bbk
The backup of the first binary trace file if memory mapped tracing is enabled.
cicscli.wbkn
The backup of subsequent binary trace files, if memory mapped tracing is enabled, where n is the number of the original .WRP file.

See Formatting the binary trace file for information on the trace conversion utility.