Rational Developer for System z

Using the MFS Editor

For Information Management System (IMS™) applications, the Message Format Service (MFS) is an editing facility that allows application programs to deal with simple logical messages instead of device-dependent data.

MFS functions as an interface between the format of messages at a terminal and the I/O formats in your program. This enables you to create well-designed screens more efficiently, thus improving operator efficiency and accuracy. The MFS Editor enables you to create and modify MFS messages and device format definitions visually.

Editor features

Device format definitions and their associated projects are displayed in the Project Explorer view. The Palette view provides both click-and-drop and drag-and-drop access to the format definition components. The editor provides additional capabilities with the Outline and Properties views.
The MFS Editor provides the following pages for designing a device format definition.
  • Design

    Contains the Design canvas and display customization options, including map filtering. Contextual right-click menus provide additional formatting and display options.

  • Source

    Provides a text editor for directly editing the MFS source.

  • Preview

    Provides terminal-style and Web preview modes.


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