Getting Started With Abend-AID Tutorial

Abend-AID is a great failure resolution tool for mainframe applications. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use Abend-AID on Topaz. If you haven’t setup Abend-AID on Topaz, I recommend reading my other article How To Configure Abend-AID on Topaz first.

To keep it simple, we are going to debug a simple failure (abend) in a small COBOL program with Compuware source support. If you are new to source support or Topaz, I recommend reading my other article Getting Started With Compuware Source Support first. We are going to use all the code in the Compuware Source Support tutorial as the base for this tutorial.

Updating the COBOL Program to Abend

Update the COBOL program you created in Compuware Source Support tutorial with the code below.

Then submit the compile JCL (SAMPCOB1) you created in the Compuware Source Support tutorial. Here is the compile JCL for your reference:

Creating the Abend

Execute the JCL (SAMPCOBR) to run the COBOL program. The source code for SAMPCOBR is below for your reference.

Importing the Dump into Abend-AID

Open up the JES Explorer to find the output of the job.

In the prefix field, type in “EXAMPRUN” then click enter.

Double click the abended job in red to open the log. At the top of the log, you should see something similar to this:

At the bottom you will see a URL to access the report in a browser. In this tutorial, we are going to open the report within Topaz. Assuming the hostname and port are the same as the Abend-AID server you defined in the How To Configure Abend-AID on Topaz tutorial, you can just open Abend-AID from the top menu.

After you sign in to the Abend-AID Server you should see something similar to this.

Click on Fault Summary to view all the dumps on the server.

Click on Total Entries.

Create a filter for the dump entry and click enter. The dump entry is defined in the job output next to the URL. In the example above, the dump ID is 7479043.

Open the report by clicking on the Dump Entry ID. You should see report homepage.

Now we need to add our source support file to use Abend-AID to it’s full capabilities. Click on “ADD DDIO”.

Now click “add” to add a dataset.

Add the Shared Directory you created in the Getting Started with Compuware Source Support tutorial under the section “Creating a Source Support Listing Dataset” then click enter. It should look something like “USERNAME.STROBE.EXAMPLE.SD”.

Now the Abend-AID report has access to the source of our COBOL program. You should see something similar to the following report home screen.

The diagnostic summary will show high level information about the program at the time of abend. For example, you can see the cause of the abend at the top: “A decimal-divide exception occurred during execution of program SAMPCOB1”. We can go more in depth by clicking on the root cause analysis.

Select the field “WS-DIV” to view the root cause analysis.

In the fault details, Abend-AID was able to determine the exact reason for the fault: “The content of WS-DIV contains the value 0. This was likely the cause of the S0CB abend.” In addition, Abend-AID supplies some recommended actions to resolve the problem.

In this tutorial we gave a glimpse into the power of Abend-AID. There are many other tools within the product to diagnose all types of problems. Abend-AID supports multiple environments including MVS, CICS, Db2, and IMS. I would highly recommend learning more at the Compuware Support Center.