Rational Developer for System z

Menu integration with Menu Manager

Many of the functions provided by TSO commands need to be integrated into the user experience for Rational® Developer for System z®. This is provided by the Menu Manager. Menu manager provides a set of panels where you can define actions and name pairs that are added to a right-click drop-down menu. After the definitions are established, you can select a Name (as defined in the menu manager preferences) and the action it is associated with is performed. These menu manager preferences are recorded into an XML document that can be shared or centrally located (for example, on a host) for import by other users.

Getting Started with Menu Manager

Menu items are configured using the Menu Manager Preference page. To access the Menu Manager Preference page, select Window -> Preferences -> Menu Manager. The Menu Manager preferences page is displayed.

Preferences Page

Typically, you can accept the defaults values and click Actions and Menus to move forward.

The first time you access the Actions and Menus panel, you must define a new XML file to store the settings and details for the actions you define. This file can be started with a new file or you can import a file from another source. In either case, the new or imported file can reside on the local machine, a network server, or on the mainframe in z/OS® UNIX Files. If the file is stared in the MVS™ side of the mainframe, it can be downloaded to the windows client (for example, with RSE) and then imported. You can have multiple XML files, but only one is active at a time.
Note: If you import the XML file, modify it, and then import an updated version, your original modifications will be lost.

Specifying Programming and User Interfaces

To create a new action, do the following:
  1. Click the New Local/Remote Action button.
  2. On the New Action Page, specify a Name. This name will show up in the menu drop down, so it needs to be unique from other actions that might have been defined. Optionally, a comment can be added that displays in the comment area at the bottom of the screen upon selection of the name in the menu.
  3. Select an action that will issue the command you are defining.
    • com.ibm.ftt.ui.menumanager.tsoaction - Creates a menu item that will be associated with a TSO command.
    • com.ibm.ftt.ui.menumanager.mfiaction - Creates a menu item that will be associated with a HATS web application or any other HTTP request.
    • com.ibm.ftt.ui.menumanager.mfiaction - Creates a menu item that will be associated with a full-screen emulator window. This should not be required because access to the emulator is integrated into the z/OS project and the RSE menu is part of the base Rational Developer for System z product.

Defining a TSO Command Action

The most important field of the Action Details definition window is the Command field. This is the TSO command that is issued when the menu item is invoked. Predefined substitution variables in the form $variable or ${variable} can be used as part of the command. The value of the substitution variable depends on the current selection. Table 1 shows a list of recognized variables. The menu must be associated with one or more file extensions. Additional file extensions can be defined using the File Types button.

Defining a HATS rich client Application Command Action detail

If you want to define an action that invokes a specific HATS rich client application, the format of the command is determined by whether your HATS rich client application is designed to perform single sign on or not:
  • If your application does not perform automated sign on, the format of the command is just the URL of the HATS application. For example: HATSRCP=appname where appname is the name of the HATS rich client application. Or, if the application has parameters, the command could be similar to the following if the application requires parameters: HATSPCP=appname hatsgv_userid hatsgv_password
  • If your application does perform automated sign on, Rational Developer for System z will substitute your user ID and password, provided that you specify the name of the variables for the user ID and password that are to be added to the HATS command. For HATS, the global variables are specified in the following format on the HATS command: HATSPCP=appname hatsgv_userid hatsgv_password
    In addition to the userid and password parameters, you can also specify additional parameters to be passed to HATS. For example:
    HATSRCP=HCmvs211Parms hatsgv_userid hatsgv_password hatsgv_var1=value1 hatsgv_var2=value2 hatsgv_var3=value3
    In the above example, the HATS Web application is invoked and the user ID and password are passed. Additionally, 3 other paramaters (hatsgv_var1, hatsgv_var2 and hatsgv_var3)are passed, along with their corresponding values. Please note that more than 3 parameters can be passed.
  • If your application does perform automated sign on, Rational Developer for System z substitutes your user ID and password, provided that you specify the name of the variables for the user ID and password that are to be added to the HATS command. For HATS, the global variables are specified in the following format on the HATS command:
    http://hostname/appname/?parameter1=one hatsgv_userid hatsgv_password 

    There must be a space between the HATSRCP=appname and hatsgv_userid and between hatsgv_userid and hatsgv_password. The substitution rules used by Rational Developer for System z are shown in Variable Substitution. The name of the global variables for userid and password are not important (except that HATS does require the hatsgv_ prefix to know that a specified parameter is a global variable). What is important is that hastgv_userid will be interpreted as the user ID and hatsgv_password will be interpreted as the password.

    In addition to the userid and password parameters, you can also specify additional parameters to be passed to HATS. For example:
    http://hostURL/myapp?tabs1=structures hatsgv_userid hatsgv_password var1=value1 var2=value2 var3=value3
    In the above example, the HATS Web application is invoked and the user ID and password are passed. Additionally, 3 other paramaters (hatsgv_var1, hatsgv_var2 and hatsgv_var3)are passed, along with their corresponding values. Please note that more than 3 parameters can be passed.
    The resulting URL, when invoked, is as follows:
    http://hostURL/myapp?tabs1=structures&hatsgv_userid=userid&hatsgv_password=password&var1=value1&var2=value2&var3=value3
    For the Web interface, the URL specified in the command can be with or without parameters in the URL itself. Host Connect correctly detects this and adjusts accordingly. For example, without any parameters in the URL itself, is as follows:
    http://hostURL/myapp hatsgv_userid hatsgv_password var1=value1 var2=value2 var3=value3
    And, with parameters in the URL is as follows:
    http://hostURL/myapp?tabs1=structures&oneparm=good  hatsgv_userid hatsgv_password var1=value1 var2=value2 var3=value3

Variable Substitution

Table 1 shows the list of defined substitution variables that can be used for constructing a command.

Table 1. Variable substitution
Variable Description
$clientaddress  
$userid ID of the user connected to the system associated with the selected resource
$systemhostname Host name or IP address of the system associated with the selected resource
$systemname name of the connection associated with the selected resource (i.e. the system "short" name)
$datasetname name of the dataset containing the selected resource
$systemhostname host name of IP address of the system associated with the selected resource
$fullname fully qualified name of the selected resource in the form DATATSETNAME(MEMBERNAME).
$name name of the selected resource
$projectname name of the project associated with the selected resource

To show the menu item in the context menu, select Show on Generic Menu when defining the menu item.

Select the file types that this command should be associated with. You can select them all by clicking the Select All button, or individual file types by checking the check box next to the appropriate file type. If a file type is missing it can be added with the File Types button.

The menu item must be added to a menu. Menus can be defined, and menu items (actions) associated with it using the Menus page in the Actions and Menus preference page. To access the Actions and Menus preference page, select Window -> Preferences -> Menu Manager ->Actions and Menus.

After the menu item has been added to the menu, the menu must be selected as the base file, the default file menu or both. This is done using the Menu Selection preferences page. To access the Menu Selection preference page, select Window -> Preferences -> Menu Manager -> Menu Selection

Menu items that are either defined with Show on Generic Menu or have been added to a menu that is active for the current view will show up in the context menu. Right clicking the appropriate object in the z/OS projects view displays the context menu.

The output of the action (if any), is displayed in the TPF Toolkit console. This is consistent with the output of local actions.

Changing an existing action definition

To change an existing action definition, select the action you want to change, right-click and select Edit.

On the Edit Action Information window, you can change any of the properties associated with the command including the file types it is associated with.


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