The console message-handling facility

The console message-handling facility is an optional feature of the CICS® subsystem that can affect the appearance of CICS messages displayed on an MVS console. It is effective when you specify FORMATMSG=YES as a parameter in the message-formatting initialization member for the CICS subsystem.

The subsystem reformatting is enabled when at least one of the following applications is executing in the MVS image where the subsystem is defined:
  • Any version of CICS Transaction Server
  • A message automation subsystem, such as NetView®, which enables the MVS subsystem console message broadcasting service
The console message-handling facility affects the messages that are displayed on MVS system consoles in the following ways:
  • The subsystem tries to ensure that all console messages issued by all CICS regions have a standard format. The format is: 
         +DFHnnnn    APPLID   MESSAGE-TEXT
    In this message:
    +DFHnnnn
    • Begins in column 1
    • The “plus” sign (+) that precedes DFHnnnn, is added by MVS to indicate that a problem-state program issued the message. It is not present when CICS issues the message while it is in supervisor state.
    APPLID
    • Begins in column 13
    • The applid inserted into the message is the specific application identifier. This identifier is specified in the APPLID system initialization parameter.
    MESSAGE-TEXT
    • Begins in column 22.
  • The subsystem adds route codes specified in the ROUTECODE subsystem initialization parameter, so the messages might be sent to more destinations.
  • The subsystem reformats messages for all CICS releases.
  • The subsystem does not reformat messages that are issued by a CICS region that has not yet determined its applid. These messages include those that are issued while processing the system initialization table and its overrides.
  • The subsystem routine that reformats the messages does not receive control until after the message has been recorded in the CICS job log. Therefore, the reformatting is not usually apparent in the job log.
  • Messages issued by the message domain already contain the applid. The subsystem does not insert the applid into such messages, but it might insert blank characters to cause alignment into standard locations.
  • If the original CICS message is a long one, the addition of the applid might cause the message to exceed the maximum length for an MVS console message. In this case, the original message is suppressed and does not appear on the console, and the reformatted message is issued using the MVS multiple-line console message service to split the message over several lines. Both the original message and perhaps several instances of the reformatted multiple-line message appear in the job log, but only one copy of the reformatted message is displayed on the console.
  • For some messages in which the applid normally follows a time and date stamp, the insertion of the applid in the standard position results in the applid being duplicated in the message. For these messages, the subsystem eliminates the time and date stamp, because these are available from other sources, and only one occurrence of the applid is shown.