I rarely write tips about CICS but this week I will make an exception. Some years ago I wrote a tip which briefly mention the CEMT transaction in CICS. If you are working a lot with CICS either as a programmer or systems programmer you are already familiar with the CEMT transaction and you know that CEMT produces various information about CICS definitions and various other resources at the time when the CEMT transaction is executed.

In other words CEMT gives you access to a wealth of information, but it can be rather hard to sort or limit those data. Fortunately the CEMT transaction has built in capabilities for information filtering. Try a CEMT I TASK USE(MYUSER) RUN where you replace MYUSER with your own userid. This command will give you information about the task carrying out the CEMT transaction for you. Or try CEMT I PROG(A*) ASS which will list all CICS programs defined on your CICS system which starts with A and are defined as ASSEMBLER programs.

The general principle for the CEMT transaction is that you are able to limit your search for definitions or ressources by using the same parameters written in the same way as they are shown on the list containing the definitions or ressources you are querying. If a parameter may have several values specified in parenthesis like in PROG(DFHSIP) or FILE(DFHRPL) you can use * as wildcard for zero to many characters and + as wildcard for one character. The wildcards do not work for numeric values which are hard to limit on unless you know the exact value.

On any list containing resources or definitions you can display all information about a resource or definition by placing the cursor on the corresponding line and press Enter. Often a lot of interesting information are displayed. Press Enter to return to the list.