Basic trace diagnostics

If you experience a recurring and reproducible problem with DB2®, tracing sometimes allows you to capture additional information about it. Under normal circumstances, you should only use a trace if asked to by IBM Software Support. The process of taking a trace entails setting up the trace facility, reproducing the error and collecting the data.

The amount of information gathered by a trace grows rapidly. When you take the trace, capture only the error situation and avoid any other activities whenever possible. When taking a trace, use the smallest scenario possible to reproduce a problem.

Collecting a trace often has a detrimental effect on the performance of a DB2 instance. The degree of performance degradation is dependent on the type of problem and on how many resources are being used to gather the trace information.

IBM Software Support should provide the following information when traces are requested:

• Simple, step by step procedures
• An explanation of where each trace is to be taken
• An explanation of what should be traced
• An explanation of why the trace is requested
• Backout procedures (for example, how to disable all traces)

Though you should be counseled by IBM Software Support as to which traces to obtain, here are some general guidelines as to when you'd be asked to obtain particular traces:

• If the problem occurs during installation, and the default installation logs are not sufficient to determine the cause of the problem, installation traces are appropriate.
• If the problem occurs in one of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) tools, and the same actions succeed when performed via explicit commands in the DB2 command window, then a Control Center trace is appropriate. Note that this will only capture problems with tools that can be launched from the Control Center.
• If the problem manifests in a CLI application, and the problem cannot be recreated outside of the application, then a CLI trace is appropriate.
• If the problem manifests in a JDBC application, and the problem cannot be recreated outside of the application, then a JDBC trace is appropriate.
• If the problem is directly related to information that is being communicated at the DRDA® layer, a DRDA trace is appropriate.
• For all other situations where a trace is feasible, a DB2 trace is most likely to be appropriate.

Trace information is not always helpful in diagnosing an error. For example, it might not capture the error condition in the following situations:

• The trace buffer size you specified was not large enough to hold a complete set of trace events, and useful information was lost when the trace stopped writing to the file or wrapped.
• The traced scenario did not recreate the error situation.
• The error situation was recreated, but the assumption as to where the problem occurred was incorrect. For example, the trace was collected at a client workstation while the actual error occurred on a server.