The control record VSAM file

The CICS® IA control file is a recoverable VSAM KSDS file that holds a single header record that holds global options that apply to all the CICS regions, a single DEFAULT control record that contains the default values for all regions and one control record for each CICS region being monitored that contains options that overrides the default record.

  • A single header record that holds global options that apply to all the CICS regions that have been or are being monitored by the Collector. How to specify the Collector global options is described in Changing global options.
  • One DEFAULT control record for all CICS regions. The control record contains region-specific options and statistics that are maintained across Collector runs, transaction failures, system failures, and restarts.
    Each control record holds the following, region-specific, information:
    • CINT options for this region. How to specify the Collector region-specific options is described in Specifying region-specific options: Region configuration.
    • The APPLID and SYSID of the CICS region.
    • Collector statistics.
    • History information:
      • Reason why STOPPED
      • user ID if STOPPED by user
      • Abend code if STOPPED by abend
      • user ID for last Collector options update
      • Date and time of last Collector options update

    The record is updated whenever any of the region-specific information changes, when the Collector options or statistics for this region change, or, the Collector state changes to STOPPED on this region.

  • One control record for each CICS region that has been or is being monitored by the Collector. The control record contains region-specific options and statistics that override the options set by the DEFAULT record.

USER control record

The CICS IA control file also holds a USER control record that is used by the CINC transaction and contains individual user's Command Flow options and regions configurations.

The CICS IA User Command Flow Utility uses the control file for regions configuration data, global options and user's control data. The administration functions for these types of information are supported by the CINT transaction, which supplies options to add, copy, delete and detail user's control data. The initial values of user's control data are default values.

To control the operation of multiple instances of the Command Flow Utility, running on different CICS regions, from a single CICS terminal, it shares the Control record file across all the regions being monitored. To do so, you can use either a VSAM record-level sharing (RLS) or a function shipping to a file-owning region.