What is a SA03 and is there any followup needed

Products

• Dispatch Output Mgmt

Issue/Introduction

What is a SA03 abend and is there any followup needed?

Environment

Release: 11.7, Dispatch, DRAS

Cause

In most cases a SA03 abend is a consequence of some other problem that occurred earlier in the life cycle of a particular CA Dispatch stared task. The SA03 abend is not a specific problem itself.

It occurs when a CA Dispatch task/process is trying to end and it cannot free all of the control blocks (ECB's) that had previously been attached for a particular task/process. For example, it may occur during shutdown if a Web Viewer user who is attached to CA Dispatch via DRAS disconnects their session without following the normal logoff protocols. This would render CA Dispatch unable to clean up the ECB's associated to that users logon session.

Or, it may occur if a task, run unit, or some other process previously abended.

Even though CA Dispatch recovered from the initial problem and continued processing, an ECB (event control block) was not cleaned up properly. When the shutdown process tries to free the ECB, the shutdown process abends with the SA03, because the fields or address of the ECB are not valid. 

Resolution

When you encounter a SA03 abend, you can look in the CA Dispatch started task SYSOUT and logs (CAILOG,DSLOG.PCLOG)  for any previous abends or unusual messages that may explain the stranded ECB.

Typically, a SA03 abend dump is not of any use, because the condition associated to the original problem (causing the ECB to be stranded in the first place) may not be reflected in the dump code.

The appropriate corrective action for a SA03 abend would be to start CA Dispatch back up using the /S DISPATCH,START=DSSTAR00 command and as soon as it comes up, issue another STOPCADS command so that it can go through it's normal closing routines. 

No other followup is needed when a SA03 abend occurs.