Patent ID: 8140565

Claim:
A method for autonomic Information Management System (IMS) mainframe: database pointer error diagnostic data extraction, the method comprising: a receiving module configured to receive a database name and an error detection time, the database name corresponding to a failed Information Management System (IMS) database; an error detection module of a pointer checker utility configured to locate one or more database pointer errors, the one or more database pointer errors corresponding to the failed IMS database; a list module configured to utilize an IMS Data Base Recovery Control facility (DBRC) LIST.DBDS command to generate an Image Copy (IC) list corresponding to the failed IMS database, the IC list comprising one or more entries, the one or more entries ordered from youngest to oldest in time, each entry comprising a runtime timestamp and IC data set name; an IC extraction module configured to extract one or more entries in the IC list, each extracted entry corresponding to a clean IC, each clean IC comprising a BATCH IC; a code generation module configured to generate a Job Control Language (JCL) code block for each clean IC, the JCL code block configured to reference the runtime timestamp and the IC data set name of the clean IC from the entry in the IC list corresponding to the clean IC; an execution module configured to execute each JCL code block so long as the JCL code block returns an unsuccessful pointer checker return code, the JCL code block configured to operate an IC pointer checker utility on each clean IC; a log list module of a mainframe RECON Query of Log Data Set Names utility (DFSKARC 0 ) configured to locate one or more log data sets in response to a successful pointer checker return code on the youngest clean IC, the one or more log data sets recorded between the error detection time and the runtime timestamp from the entry associated with the youngest clean IC; and a log extraction module configured to extract an evaluation log list, the evaluation list comprising one or more evaluation log data sets, each evaluation log data set comprising a change operation identifier and at least one of the one or more database pointer errors.