Inspect Manual

Introduction
Inspect Manual429164-006
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Interactive Control of Program Execution
Debugging programs in an OSS environment
Interactive Control of Program Execution
Inspect enables you to look at your program while it is running. Without interactive
control of program execution, take these actions:
1. Edit your source code, adding statements that write out status messages.
2. Recompile your source program.
3. Execute the resultant object program.
4. Examine the status messages.
5. Return to Step 1.
Interactive execution control enables you to bypass this time-consuming procedure. It
enables you to stop and resume execution of your program selectively. Using this “stop
and go” technique, you can quickly find out how your program is malfunctioning.
Using an interactive debugger is more efficient than using the primitive cycle. For
example, communicating by telephone is more efficient than by telegram.
Concurrent Debugging of All Parts of an Application
Large applications tend to consist of several programs working together, passing status
messages and data back and forth to each other. Inspect enables you to debug such
multiprogram applications, because it can debug more than one program at a time.
Although Inspect permits concurrent debugging of several programs, it tracks each
program separately. This separate treatment enables to debug a multiprogram
application as easily as a single-program application.
Debugging of PATHWAY Applications
PATHWAY uses the requester/server approach to application design. The requester
provides the terminal management functions, and the server provides the database
management functions. Inspect, with the PATHWAY Terminal Control Process (TCP),
enables you to debug requesters, servers, or complete PATHWAY applications.
Saving and Examining a Process State
Inspect allows the state of processes that are being debugged to be saved to a save
file. In addition, if you enable the SAVEABEND attribute of a process, DMON will
create a file containing an image of that process if it abends. You can use Inspect to
examine this file, enabling you to view a process in a normally inaccessible state—at
abnormal termination. In addition, Inspect allows the state of processes that are being
debugged to be saved to a save file.