ASRA- CICS Program Check

ASRA is the CICS program-check abend - the CICS equivalent of the S0C7, S0C4 and S0C1 batch abends.

What it means

• ASRA means a program check interrupt happened inside a CICS task: data exception, protection exception, operation exception and similar hardware interrupts.
• CICS catches the interrupt and abends the transaction with ASRA instead of letting the whole region fail.
• The terminal user usually sees "TRANSACTION xxxx FAILED WITH ABEND ASRA".

Common causes

• The same causes as the batch abends: bad numeric data (like S0C7), writing into protected storage (like S0C4), or executing a bad instruction (like S0C1).
• Moving non-numeric data into a numeric field and then using it in arithmetic.
• Storing into a COMMAREA or container area beyond its defined length.
• A subscript or index going out of table bounds.

How to find it

• Check the CICS log for message DFHAP0001, which records the ASRA with the program name and the interrupt type.
• Take a transaction dump and inspect the failing instruction offset and the data areas.
• Use CEDF to step through the transaction interactively and watch the abend happen at the exact statement.

How to fix it

• Code EXEC CICS HANDLE ABEND to trap the ASRA and route to an error paragraph instead of dumping the transaction to the user.
• Then fix the real bug: the bad data, the out-of-bounds subscript, or the storage overwrite.
• Validate numeric fields with NUMERIC tests before arithmetic, and keep COMMAREA lengths in sync.

Example

• Trap the ASRA with HANDLE ABEND so the program gets control instead of abending the transaction:-
  
  PROCEDURE DIVISION. MAIN-PARA. EXEC CICS HANDLE ABEND LABEL(ERR-PARA) END-EXEC. EXEC CICS RECEIVE MAP('MAP1') MAPSET('MYMAP') END-EXEC. COMPUTE WS-TOTAL = WS-AMT-IN * WS-RATE. EXEC CICS SEND MAP('MAP1') MAPSET('MYMAP') ERASE END-EXEC. EXEC CICS RETURN END-EXEC. ERR-PARA. EXEC CICS SEND TEXT FROM('SORRY - AN ERROR OCCURRED') ERASE END-EXEC. EXEC CICS RETURN END-EXEC.
• If WS-AMT-IN holds spaces instead of a number, the COMPUTE causes a data exception and ASRA - validate it first:-
  
  IF WS-AMT-IN IS NUMERIC COMPUTE WS-TOTAL = WS-AMT-IN * WS-RATE ELSE MOVE 0 TO WS-TOTAL END-IF.