Patent ID: 8458519

Claim:
A method for retaining diagnostic information for data in a computing storage environment by a processor device, comprising: initializing a diagnostic component, apart from a volume table of contents (VTOC), that is associated with an integrated catalog facility (ICF) catalog and with a base data set from a plurality of data sets via a catalog association record, wherein the diagnostic component is configured to retain base data set-specific diagnostic information retrievable by the computing storage environment to assist in error diagnosis and the ICF catalog is one of the plurality of data sets storing a plurality of information about the plurality of data sets for facilitating a retrieval of a name of the base data set and assists with retaining and retrieval of the base data set-specific diagnostic information; storing the base data set-specific diagnostic information pursuant to at least one event associated with the base data set, wherein storing the base data set-specific diagnostic information pursuant to the at least one event associated with the base data set includes performing each of: tracking a number of times the base data set is opened for output, logging at least one of a job, system, time of open time of close and a high used relative byte address at a time of closure, tracking a last backup data set, logging at least one of a backup name, backup location, and backup date, logging a history of each system that accesses the base data set, logging at least one prior error event, logging an enqueue (ENQ) operation performed subsequent to an address space failure, and logging extent information associated with the base data set.