Job tracing

Sometimes a problem cannot be tracked to a specific program. In these cases, Start Trace (STRTRC) and Trace Job (TRCJOB) commands can be used for tracing module flow, i5/OS™ data acquisition and CL commands executed.

These tools should be used when the problem analysis procedures do not supply sufficient information about the problem. For distributed database applications, these commands are also useful for capturing distributed database requests and response data streams.

If you need to get a job trace of the application server job, you need to start a service job at the server.

• Trace job
  The Trace Job (TRCJOB) command is the older of the two tracing tools. As the trace records are generated, the records are stored in an internal trace storage area. When the trace is ended, the trace records can be written to a spooled printer file (QPSRVTRC) or directed to a database output file.
• Start trace
  You can also use the Start Trace (STRTRC) command to perform traces. The STRTRC command is more flexible and less intrusive than the Trace Job (TRCJOB) command. It allows tracing across multiple jobs and shows more in-depth details about the module flow.