SFxx abend in IDMS

Products

• IDMS

Issue/Introduction

An IDMS CV, task, batch job or CICS interface abends with an SFxx abend code. 

Environment

Release: All supported releases.

Cause

An SFxx abend code means that the job or task in question has attempted to invoke an SVC and that SVC has not been generated and installed in the LPAR with CAIRIM. The last two characters of the abend code represent the number of the SVC in hex.

The most commonly used SVC numbers are 172 to 176 and 251 to 255, so the abend codes could be SFAC SFAD SFAE SFAF SFBO SFFB SFFC SFFD SFFE or SFFF.

Resolution

These are the places where the SVC number can be specified and so should be checked that the correct number has been used.

• In a CV, it is specified in the SYSGEN SYSTEM statement and can be overridden with an EXEC PARM in the startup JCL.
• It is also in the RHDCSRTT assembly in the INITIAL entry:
  
  //SYSIN    DD *
         #SECRTT TYPE=INITIAL,SGNRETN=5,SVCNUM=172,                    X
               USRPROF=(NULL,OFF)
  
  Note: if the abend is occurring in a batch job, the most likely cause is that a rogue copy of the RHDCSRTT load module that was assembled with an incorrect SVC number is in the STEPLIB.
• In a CICS interface, it is specified in the CICSOPT/IDMSINTC or IDMSINTL macro.
• It may be specified in a NODE definition in SYSGEN.

Check also that the abend might be occurring in any IDMS related work (e.g. a batch job) before CAIRIM has been run to load the SVC.

Additional Information

Note: This abend is different to the more common SExx abend which means there is a problem with the security of the relevant SVC. See SEAD, SEFD, or other SExx abend at startup of a CA IDMS Central Version (CV). SFxx indicates that the SVC is simply not there.