OSI/TS Management Programming Manual

Using SPI to Build Commands and Decode Responses
SPI Programming Considerations for OSI/TS
056786 Tandem Computers Incorporated 3–9
Error Handling Each response returned by OSI/TS includes a return token (ZSPI-TKN-RETCODE),
whose value indicates whether an error occurred when OSI/TS attempted to perform
the command. An error is a serious condition that prevents the command from being
completed. If the command completed with no errors, the value of the return token is
ZCOM-ERR-OK. If the command returns an empty response record—one containing no
information—the value of the return token is ZCOM-ERR-EMPT-RSP. The latter
situation occurs, for instance, when an application uses ZSPI-TKN-RESPONSE-TYPE
to request only response records for objects on which errors or warnings occurred, but
the command finishes processing without any errors or warnings. If ZSPI-TKN-
RETCODE has any value other than the two just mentioned, this means that an error
occurred. In this case, OSI/TS includes an error list in the response to provide
information about the error.
A warning reports a condition less serious than that of an error. If no errors occurred
but a warning did occur, the return token will have the value ZCOM-ERR-OK, but an
error list will appear in the response to provide information about the warning
condition.
General programming considerations for handling errors and warnings reported in
responses are discussed in the Communications Management Programming Manual.
Error handling considerations for specific commands are described along with those
commands in Section 5. Errors defined by the OSI/TS subsystem, together with the
contents of the error lists returned for them, are described in Appendix A. OSI/TS can
also return common data communications (ZCOM) errors; these errors and their error
lists are described in the Communications Management Programming Manual.
Security OSI/TS commands are either sensitive or nonsensitive. Sensitive commands can affect
the state or configuration of subsystem objects, start or stop tracing, or change the
values of statistics counters; nonsensitive commands cannot. SCP allows sensitive
commands to be issued only by members of the Guardian 90 user group that owns the
TSP process. Section 5 identifies each OSI/TS command as sensitive or nonsensitive.