Reporting › Abend Report › Save Area Trace Report

Save Area Trace Report

The Save Area Trace report assists you in tracing and debugging programs in a multiple-module environment. This report prints only once for any given ABEND reporting sequence. Whether the ABEND occurs in a multiple-module run and CA SymDump Batch reports on more than one program, or it is a single-module run with only the abend report, the Save Area Trace always prints just once.

When a program calls a subordinate program, the caller's registers are stored in an eighteen-fullword save area to establish the means of return. A series of calling and called programs establishes a chain of save areas, as shown in the following example.

*******************                                                      
* SAVE AREA TRACE *                                                      
*******************                                                      
SAVE AREA FOR SYSTEM                                          
A                    B      C                D                  E        
SA 00006F60  WD1 00000000   BKL 00000000   FWL 00000000   RET 80FE0708   
          F  EPA B6500888 G R0  FD000008   R1  00006FF8   R2  00000040   
             R3  007D9D84   R4  007D9D60   R5  007FF5E0   R6  007B7FE0   
             R7  FD000000   R8  007F8088   R9  007FF200   R10 00000000   
             R11 007FF5E0   R12 80C999FA                                 
                                                                          
SYSTEM CALLED CEE  (ASSEMBLER)                                            
SAVE AREA FOR CEE                                                         
                                                                          
SA 365113C0  WD1 00000000   BKL 00006F60   FWL 00000000   RET 00CA5AB0    
             EPA 36500888   R0  00000000   R1  3650F7B8   R2  00000000    
             R3  00000000   R4  00000000   R5  00000000   R6  00000000    
             R7  00000000   R8  00000000   R9  00000000   R10 00000000    
             R11 00000000   R12 36510A20                                  
                                                                          
CEE CALLED CAOEDEMO  (COBOL FOR Z/OS  NOT CA-OPT)                         
                                                                          
CAOEDEMO ABENDED                                                          

In this example, the program called by the system is CAOEDEMO. (The intervening save area is for the LE runtime).

The following are the contents of the save area (all addresses are absolute hexadecimal):

A

Displays the system's save area location.

B

Displays the first word of the eighteen-word save area. It is not used by the system and is usually zeros.

C

Points backwards to the location of the prior save area (if any). BKL stands for backward link.

D

Points forward to the location of the save area belonging to the next program. FWL is the forward link.

E

Represents the return address (RET) as an absolute hexadecimal location.

F

Represents the point where CAOEDEMO is entered when control is passed from the System to CAOEDEMO. EPA means entry point address.

G

The next thirteen words, zero through twelve, save the contents of registers.

An eighteen-word save area prints for each active program in the hierarchy leading to the program that abended. The save area for the abending program does not display.

Whenever an unidentifiable program is encountered in the chain, it designates the program in the Save Area Trace as UNKWNnnn, where nnn is 1 to 999. CA SymDump Batch does not determine the program's language.

The information that is supplied in this detailed version of the Save Area Trace can be valuable to the user who understands register conventions and whose problem involves more than one module.