ANALYSIS OF MAINFRAME APPLICATION ABENDS

Mainframes play a critical role in the daily operations of the

world’s largest corporations. The reliability of the

mainframe has led to its popularity and longevity.

Businesses today rely on the mainframe to:

• Perform large-scale transaction processing (thousands

of transactions per second)

• Support thousands of users and application programs

concurrently accessing numerous resources

• Manage terabytes of information in databases

• Handle large-bandwidth communication

Applications running on the mainframe platform are

typically built on decades of incremental enhancements by

multiple people and often by multiple organizations. While

COBOL, PL/I and Assembler programs continue to

dominate the workload on the platform, there has been

considerable interest in Java workload on the platform in

recent years. These present significant challenges when it

comes to analysis of z/OS applications abends today

Introduction

Avoid costly downtime by recovering from

failures of mission critical applications

quickly.

Fault Analyzer for z/OS is designed to provide root cause

analysis of mainframe application abends in a variety of

environments including z/OS, Language Environment,

CICS, IMS, DB2, WebSphere MQ and Unix System Services

(USS). It provides comprehensive support for presenting

root-cause analysis of abends for programs written in

COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, C/C++ and Java. The report

presents what happened and why. It includes source line

display of abending programs and variables involved in the

abend to help you diagnose the problem quickly.

The Products

Fault Analyzer for z/OS is enhanced to support analysis of

applications running AMODE 64. Specifically, the latest

release, V14.1, delivered enhancements to provide support

for analyzing PL/I programs compiled with 64-bit option.

This is an important step forward to ensure Fault Analyzer

continues to provide comprehensive support for all major

environments and languages in one package.

Fault Analyzer for z/OS is the only product in the market

which provides support for the latest compiler and

optimization technology from IBM. Specifically, it provides

support for analyzing optimized programs by the latest

compilers as well as IBM Automatic Binary Optimizer for

z/OS. It also exploits new features of IBM compilers to

streamline the problem diagnosis process.

Fault Analyzer for z/OS allows you to access root cause

analysis in several different ways. ISPF based interface

provides the most comprehensive information. Similar

interface is also available under CICS using Interactive

Panel Viewer (IPV) technology. It also provides an interface

under Eclipse as well as a browser interface. In the latest

release, a set of RESTful APIs were added to the product

which enables integration of Fault Analyzer functions into

your own business processes.

Fault Analyzer for z/OS is invoked when your z/OS

application encounters an abend. The product is designed

to work in a production environment where the abending

program is analyzed in real-time to capture essential

information for root-cause analysis. The real-time analysis

report can be used “as-is” or perhaps supplemented with

additional information later for more detailed reporting.

The product can also analyze system dumps if this is the

preferred approach by the user.

The root cause analysis report helps its user to understand

why the application abend occurred and take preventative

actions to avoid the costly error again.

The Value

For more information, please contact us at products-info@hcl.com. WX

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Root cause

analysis of abending

programs

Support for traditional

workload (COBOL, PL/I and

Assembler) as well as new

workload (Java and 64-bit

programs)

Flexible interfaces to

access abend analysis

information when

you need it

Essential tool during

z/OS application

performance optimization

to ensure problems are

resolved quickly

IBM and HCL have entered into a 15+ year IP partnership.

HCL created a new division called HCL Products and

Platforms specifically to continue the development,

support and customer advocacy for IBM IP. HCL will

accelerate product roadmaps; delivering new features and

functionality, making the products better than ever.

HCL is taking a "hypercare" approach to client

engagement and have expanded IBM's Lab Advocate

Program; more than doubling the current lab services

capacity available for terminal emulation and

transformation products. Further, new service offerings will

be available for new and existing clients.

The Partnership