History records vs SMF records in XCOM

Products

• XCOM Data Transport - z/OS

Issue/Introduction

XCOM for Z/OS may be configured to write SMF records at the completion of type=execute and type=schedule transfers.

The layout of the SMF records is described in assembler macro SMFDSECT, which is distributed in the CBXGMAC library

There is a comment in SMFDSECT stating that it includes the XCOM history record so that, starting at label SMFHIST, SMFDSECT macro should match HSTDSECT (which maps the XCOM history records.

Does this mean that, for a given transfer, this part of the SMF record is expected to match the corresponding history record?

Environment

Release : 12.0

Component : XCOM Data Transport for z/OS

Resolution

In theory, the SMF record should match the history record. The reason is that both records are generated at the same time using the same information.

However, bear in mind that, in fact, these records are written by different programs which introduces the possibility of differences in some fields in the records created by the same exact transfer.

If you find this situation, it might be a bug so please feel free to raise a case with XCOM support.

To document the case, please include the following items:

• Hex print of the mismatching history and SMF records
• Parameters for the transfer that created the records
• Messages from the processing of the transfer
• Indication of where the transfer was processed (the XCOM started task or an XCOMJOB TYPE=EXECUTE run)
• XCOM maintenance report taken where the transfer was processed

To produce the maintenance report in an XCOMJOB TYPE=EXECUTE job, add TRACE=YES to the JCL PARM so that, during initialization, XCOM prints the report to XCOMLOG.

To produce the report in the XCOM started task, send it a MODULES command from the MVS console by command:

/F stc_name,MODULES

In response to the MODULES command, the started task will print the maintenance report to XCOMLOG DD