Of course you can teach dump reading and debugging; Steve Comstock does it, I do it, and others do it as well.
The classes go like this (at least mine): first we take a close look at the compile listing, and try to get a deep understanding of all the informations contained therein and how they help in dump reading later. Then we look at the linker and binder listing in the same way, and we try to get a picture of the layout of the load module or program objects. Then it's time to cover the linkage conventions etc. and to look at the save areas or the tracebacks in the LE dumps. It's necessary to be able to compute the different kinds of offsets (one into another), and to find the relevant sections (static CSECTs, DSAs, WSAs etc, if you have the RENT option set etc.). Some ASSEMBLER knowledge helps, but is not absolutely necessary. BTW: control blocks don't matter much; it's too MVS specific, but the above skills also apply for other OSes (with minor differences). I have done dump classes for more than 20 years now for different customers, and if they do not enable the participants to check out the dumps themselves (immediately), they get at least a deeper understanding of LE, the operating system and the things that the compiler does. Some twenty years ago at my current customer's site every developer was forced to take this dump class once, if he or she doesn't have similar skills from the previous job (for example ASSEMBLER knowledge). It is no more this way, today (unfortunately). Kind regards Bernd Am 26.07.2013 00:07, schrieb [email protected]:
I think dump reading is a matter of understanding control blocks. I dont believe some one can teach debugging, it evolves over years of examing and analyizing dumps. It always helps to have the source code. just mt 2 cents Paul D'Angelo ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Don V Nielsen <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: 3 job openings for mainframe Assembler/C programmers, dump readers Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 07:45:10 -0500 Where might one one find good instruction on how to read a dump? This is probably my poorest skill and I should be better at it.
