FORCEPURGE of a CICS transaction accessing IDMS

Products

• IDMS
• IDMS - Database

Issue/Introduction

Sometimes a CICS transaction that accesses IDMS gets "hung" and IDMS is not responding to the latest request from the CICS program. Is doing FORCEPURGE a valid option?

Environment

Release: All supported releases.

Resolution

No. 

You should never do a FORCEPURGE of a CICS transaction that has an active IDMS task.

A CICS task waits on an ECB called LREECB which is in a piece of storage in CICS. This occurs when a task running under CICS issues a request to the IDMS back-end system. When the request is completed, IDMS does a post of the LREECB.

If the CICS task is FORCEPURGEd, the storage that had contained the LREECB will have been released. If that storage is reused by the CICS system and/or another task the posting of the ECB would result in unpredictable results.

If such a situation occurs, you should determine using PMRM or other monitoring tool in the IDMS CV why the task for the CICS transaction is not responding and either take some action that will allow the task in question to proceed or cancel the task in the IDMS CV.