User journals

CICS user journals are identified by their journal names (or number, in the case of DFHJnn names), which map on to MVS log streams.

You name your user journals using any 1-8 characters that conform to the rules of a data set qualifier name. Apart from the user journal names that begin with the letters DFHJ, followed by two numeric characters, you should avoid using names that begin with DFH. User journal names of the form DFHJnn are supported for compatibility with earlier CICS releases.

Although 8-character journal names offer considerable flexibility compared with the DFHJnn name format of previous releases, you are recommended not to create large numbers of journals (for example, by using the terminal name or userid as part of a program-generated name).

Journal name DFHLOG (on an EXEC CICS WRITE JOURNALNAME command) indicates that you want to write to the CICS system log.

When used in FILE and PROFILE resource definitions, the journal numbers 1 through 99 map on to the user journal names DFHJ01–99. You can map these journal names to specific MVS log stream names by specifying JOURNALMODEL resource definitions, or allow them to default. If you do not specify matching JOURNALMODEL definitions, by default user journals are mapped to LSNs of the form userid.applid.DFHJnn.

Table 1 shows an example of a user journal name table entry.