Using JOURNALMODELs to define general logs

If you are running multiple cloned copies of your application-owning regions (AORs), it is probable that the logged data is common and that you would want to merge the data from all of the AORs to the same log stream.

The following JOURNALMODEL resource definition maps CICS® journals of the same journal identifier to a shared log stream:

  DEFINE GROUP(MERGE) DESC('Merge journals across cloned CICS regions')
         JOURNALMODEL(JRNLS) JOURNALNAME(DFHJ*) TYPE(MVS)
         STREAMNAME(&USERID..SHARED.&JNAME.)

In this example, the literal SHARED is used in place of the default CICS applid, which would require a unique log stream for each region.

You might want to use JOURNALMODELs to map journals to log streams if the CICS region userid changes between runs. This could be the case, for example, where CICS test regions are shared between groups of developers. It would be wasteful to create log streams with a different high level qualifier for each user and you might prefer to use the same log streams regardless of which developer starts up a CICS region. For example, the following generic JOURNALMODEL definition maps all journals not defined by more explicit definitions to the same log stream

  DEFINE GROUP (TEST) DESC('Journals for test CICS regions')
         JOURNALMODEL(JRNLS) JOURNALNAME(*) TYPE(MVS)
         STREAMNAME(TESTCICS.&APPLID..&JNAME.)

You might want to merge data written by CICS regions using different journal names to a single log stream.

  DEFINE GROUP (TEST) DESC('Merging journals 10 to 19')
         JOURNALMODEL(J10TO19) JOURNALNAME(DFHJ1*) TYPE(MVS)
         STREAMNAME(&USERID..MERGED.JNLS)
  DEFINE GROUP (TEST) DESC('Merging journalnames JNLxxxxx')
         JOURNALMODEL(JNLXXXXX) JOURNALNAME(JNL*) TYPE(MVS)
         STREAMNAME(&USERID..MERGED.JNLS)

The last qualifier of the stream name is used as the CICS resource name for dispatcher waits. Therefore, if it is self-explanatory, it can be helpful when interpreting monitoring information and CICS trace entries.