This section discusses the two basic methods Natural offers for the handling of application
errors: default processing and application-specific processing. Furthermore, it describes
the options you have to enable the application specific error processing: coding an ON
ERROR statement block within a Natural object or using a separate error transaction
program.
Finally, this section gives an overview of the features that are provided to configure Natural's error processing behavior, to retrieve information on an error, to process or debug an application error.
This document covers the following topics:
For information on error handling in a Natural RPC environment, see Handling Errors in the Natural RPC (Remote Procedure Call) documentation.
When an error occurs in a Natural application, Natural will by default proceed in the following way:
Natural terminates the execution of the currently running application object;
Natural issues an error message;
Natural returns to command input mode.
"Command input mode" means that, depending on your Natural configuration,
the Natural main menu, the NEXT command prompt, or a user-defined startup
menu may appear.
The displayed error message contains the Natural error number, the corresponding message text and the affected Natural object and line number where the error has occurred.
Because after the occurrence of an error the execution of the affected application object
is terminated, the status of any pending database transactions may be affected by actions
required by the setting of the profile parameter ETEOP. Unless Natural has issued an
END TRANSACTION statement as
a result of the settings of these parameters, a BACKOUT TRANSACTION statement is issued when Natural returns
to command input mode.
Natural enables you to adapt the error processing if the default error processing does not meet your application’s requirements. Possible reasons to establish an application specific error processing may be:
The information on the error is to be stored for further analysis by the application developer.
The application execution is to be continued after error recovery, if possible.
A specific transaction handling is necessary.
Because the execution of the affected Natural application object is terminated after an
application error has occurred, the status of the pending database transactions may be
influenced by actions which are triggered by the settings of the profile parameter ETEOP.
Therefore, further transaction handling (END
TRANSACTION or BACKOUT
TRANSACTION statement) has to be performed by the application’s
error processing.
To enable the application specific error processing, you have the following options:
You may code an ON ERROR statement block within a Natural object.
You may use a separate error transaction program.
These options are described in the following sections.
You may use the ON ERROR
statement to intercept execution time errors within the application where an error occurs.
From within an ON ERROR statement block, it is possible to resume
application execution on the current level or on a superior level.
Moreover, you may specify an ON ERROR statement in multiple objects of an
application in order to process any errors that have occurred on subordinate levels. Thus,
application specific error processing may exactly be tailored to the application’s
needs.
ON ERROR Statement Block
You may exit from an ON ERROR statement block by specifying one of the
following statements:
Application execution is resumed on the current level.
Error processing is assumed to be complete and application execution is resumed on the superior level.
Error processing is assumed to be complete and the "fetched" program is executed.
Natural stops the execution of the affected program, ends the application and returns to command input mode.
The execution of the Natural application is stopped and also the Natural session is terminated.
If the execution of the ON ERROR statement block is not terminated by
one of these statements, the error is percolated to the Natural object on the superior
level for processing by an ON ERROR statement block that exists there.
If none of the Natural objects on any of the superior levels contains an ON
ERROR statement block, but if an error transaction program has been specified
(as described in the next
section), this error transaction program will receive control.
If none of the Natural objects on any of the superior levels contains an ON
ERROR statement block and no error transaction program has been specified
there, Natural's default error processing will be performed as described above.
You may specify an error transaction program in the following places:
In the profile parameter ETA.
If Natural Security is installed, within the Natural Security library profile; see Components of a Library Profile in the Natural Security documentation.
Within a Natural object by assigning the name of the program which is to receive
control in the event of an error condition as a value to the system variable *ERROR-TA,
using an ASSIGN, COMPUTE or MOVE statement.
If you assign the name of an error transaction program to the system variable
*ERROR-TA during the Natural session, this assignment
supersedes an error transaction program specified using the profile parameter
ETA. Regardless of whether you use the ETA
profile parameter or assign a value to the system variable
*ERROR-TA, the error transaction program names are not saved and
restored by Natural for different levels of the call hierarchy. Therefore, if you assign a
name to the system variable *ERROR-TA in a Natural object,
the specified program will be invoked to process any error that occurs in the current
Natural session after the assignment.
On the one hand, if you specify an error transaction program by using the profile
parameter ETA, an error transaction is defined for the complete
Natural session without having the need for individual assignments in Natural objects. On
the other hand, the method of assigning a program to the system variable
*ERROR-TA provides more flexibility and, for example,
allows you to have different error transaction programs in different application branches.
If the system variable *ERROR-TA is reset to blank,
Natural's default error processing will be performed as described above.
If an error transaction program is specified and an application error occurs, execution of the application is terminated, and the specified error transaction program receives control to perform the following actions:
Analyze the error;
Log the error information;
Terminate the Natural session;
Continue the application execution by calling a program using the FETCH
statement.
Because the error transaction program receives control in the same way as if it had been called from the command prompt, it is not possible to resume application execution in one of the Natural objects that were active at the time when the error occurred.
If a syntax error occurs and the Natural profile parameter SYNERR is set to
ON, the error transaction program will also receive control.
An error transaction program must be located in the library to which you are currently logged on or in a current steplib library.
When an error occurs, Natural executes a STACK TOP
DATA statement and places the following information at the top of
the stack:
| Stack Data | Format/Length | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Error number | N4 | Natural error number.
Note: |
|
| Line number | N4 | Number of the line where the error has
occurred.
If the status is |
|
| Status | A1 | Status code: | |
C |
Command processing error | ||
L |
Logon processing error | ||
O |
Object (execution) time error | ||
R |
Error on remote server (in conjunction with Natural RPC) | ||
S |
Syntax error | ||
| Object name | A8 | Name of the Natural object where the error has occurred. | |
| Level number | N2 | Level number of the Natural object where the
error has occurred.
If a Natural syntax error occurs at compile time and
profile parameter If a Natural runtime error occurs and the level number of the Natural object
is greater than |
|
If a Natural runtime error occurs and the
level number of the Natural object is greater than 99:
|
|||
| Level number enhanced | I4 | Current level number (512 at maximum). | |
If a Natural syntax error occurs at compile
time and profile parameter SYNERR is set to ON:
|
|||
| Error position | N3 | Position of the offending item in the source line. | |
| Item length | N3 | Length of the offending item. | |
This information can be retrieved in the error transaction program, using an
INPUT statement.
Example:
DEFINE DATA LOCAL
1 #ERROR-NR (N5)
1 #LINE (N4)
1 #STATUS-CODE (A1)
1 #PROGRAM (A8)
1 #LEVEL (N2)
1 #LEVELI4 (I4)
1 #POSITION-IN-LINE (N3)
1 #LENGTH-OF-ITEM (N3)
END-DEFINE
IF *DATA > 6 THEN /* SYNERR = ON and a syntax error occurred
INPUT
#ERROR-NR
#LINE
#STATUS-CODE
#PROGRAM
#LEVEL
#POSITION-IN-LINE
#LENGTH-OF-ITEM
ELSE
INPUT /* other error
#ERROR-NR
#LINE
#STATUS-CODE
#PROGRAM
#LEVEL
#LEVELI4
END-IF
WRITE #STATUS-CODE
* DECIDE ON FIRST VALUE OF STATUS-CODE
* ... /* process error
* END-DECIDE
END
Some of the information placed on top of the stack is equivalent to the contents of
several system variables that are available in an ON ERROR statement block:
| Stack Data | Equivalent System Variable in ON ERROR Statement Block |
|---|---|
| Error number | *ERROR-NR |
| Line number | *ERROR-LINE |
| Object name | *PROGRAM |
| Level number | *LEVEL |
If Natural Security is installed, the additional rules for the processing of logon errors apply. For further information, see Transactions in the Natural Security documentation.
Natural provides a variety of error processing related features that
Enable you to configure Natural’s error processing behavior;
Help you in retrieving information about errors that have occurred;
Support you in processing these errors;
Support you in debugging application errors.
These features can be grouped as follows:
The following profile parameters have an influence on the behavior of Natural in the event of an error:
| Profile Parameter | Purpose |
|---|---|
CPCVERR |
Code Page Conversion Error |
DU |
Dump generation after abnormal termination |
CC |
Error processing in batch mode |
ETA |
Error Transaction Program |
ETEOP |
Issue END TRANSACTION at End of Program
|
MADIO |
Maximum DBMS calls between screen I/O operations |
MAXCL |
Maximum number of program calls |
RCFIND |
Handling of Response Code 113 for FIND Statement
|
RCGET |
Handling of Response Code 113 for GET
Statement
|
SYNERR
|
Control of Syntax Errors |
ZD |
Zero-division check |
The following application related system variables can be used to locate an error or to obtain/specify the name of the program which is to receive control in the event of an error condition:
| System Variable | Content |
|---|---|
*ERROR-LINE |
Source-code line number of the statement that caused an error.
See Example 1. |
*ERROR-NR |
Error number of the error which caused an ON
ERROR condition to be entered.
|
*ERROR-TA |
Name of the program which is to receive control in the event
of an error condition.
See Example 2. |
*LEVEL |
Level number of the Natural object where the error has occurred. |
*LIBRARY-ID |
Name of the library to which the user is currently logged on. |
*PROGRAM |
Name of the Natural object that is currently being executed.
See Example 1. |
...
/*
ON ERROR
IF *ERROR-NR = 3009 THEN
WRITE 'LAST TRANSACTION NOT SUCCESSFUL'
/ 'HIT ENTER TO RESTART PROGRAM'
FETCH 'ONEEX1'
END-IF
WRITE 'ERROR' *ERROR-NR 'OCCURRED IN PROGRAM' *PROGRAM
'AT LINE' *ERROR-LINE
FETCH 'MENU'
END-ERROR
/*
...
...
*ERROR-TA := 'ERRORTA1'
/* from now on, program ERRORTA1 will be invoked
/* to process application errors
...
MOVE 'ERRORTA2' TO *ERROR-TA
/* change error transaction program to ERRORTA2
...
For further information on these system variables, see the corresponding sections in the System Variables documentation.
The following terminal command has an influence on the behavior of Natural in the event of an error:
| Terminal Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
%E= |
Activate/Deactivate Error Processing |
The following system commands provide additional information on an error situation or invoke the utilities for debugging or logging database calls:
| System Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
LASTMSG
|
Display additional information on the error situation which has occurred last. |
RPCERR
|
Only applies in a Natural RPC (Remote Procedure Call) environment. Display Natural, EntireX Broker and EntireX RPC server errors that last occurred during an RPC session. For more information, see Using the RPCERR Program in the Natural RPC (Remote Procedure Call) documentation. |
TECH
|
Display technical and other information about your Natural session, for example, information on the last error that occurred. |
The following application programming interfaces (APIs) are generally available for getting additional information on an error situation or to install an error transaction.
| API | Purpose |
|---|---|
RPCINFO
|
Only applies in a Natural RPC (Remote Procedure Call) environment. This subprogram retrieves Natural, EntireX Broker and EntireX RPC server errors that last occurred during an RPC session. For more information, see Using the RPCINFO Subprogram in the Natural RPC (Remote Procedure Call) documentation. |
USR0040N
|
Get type of last error |
USR0622N
|
Reset error counter in ON ERROR statement
block
|
USR1016N
|
Get error level for error in nested copycodes |
USR2001N
|
Get information on last error |
USR2006N
|
Get information from error message collector |
USR2007N |
Get or set data for RPC default server |
USR2010N
|
Get error information on last database call |
USR2026N
|
Get TECH information
|
USR2030N
|
Get dynamic error message parts from the last error |
USR3320N
|
Find user short error message (including steplibs search) |
USR4012N
|
Set application error on RPC server |
USR4214N
|
Get program level information |
For further information, see SYSEXT - Natural Application Programming Interfaces in the Utilities documentation.