Record commitment and SVCPGM question

I've been in the process of refactoring a lot of old applications, and in
the process have started to move some of the functions into SVCPGMs.

Today I ran into an odd situation, and I don't know if I caused it, or if
its just my own ignorance of what is supposed to be going on.

Basically, I have a SVCPGM (TESTUTIL) that reads/updates a couple of files
(say FILE1 (update), FILE2 (output only)).

I call a program , that calls procedures in the SVCPGM from the command
line.  What I notice is that changes to FILE1 are immediately obvious, while
writes to FILE2 aren't visible (via DSPPFM or DBU) until I log-off,
terminating the SVCPGM. (It was compiled with ACTGRP(*CALLER), as was the
program that is referencing it.)

What bothers me is that I can't see the records that are being written until
after the SVCPGM terminates.  Is this normal? I am not using any commitment
control that I am aware of.