Rational Developer for System z

A Quick Start Guide for Experienced 3270 ISPF Users

About this guide

The objective of this Quick Start guide is to help experienced ISPF users transition to using Rational® Developer for System z® as a development platform. The remainder of this guide explains some of the key concepts, the different artifacts, and how these are related to each other. It explains how some of the routine tasks performed on ISPF can be performed on Developer for System z. The guide concludes with an explanation of the Eclipse Help feature.

Key concepts of Rational Developer for System z, Rational Software Development Platform, and Eclipse

Developer for System z has a remote system component and a workstation client component. The remote system component is typically installed by a site's system programmer and is “transparent” to application programmers. For the remainder of this guide, unless the remote system component is specifically called out, the term Rational Developer for System z refers to the workstation component of the tool – the graphical user interface powered by the Eclipse platform. Rational Developer for System z is a set of development tools that is built on the Rational Software Development Platform, which itself is built on the Eclipse platform (www.eclipse.org). Think of the Eclipse platform as the framework and infrastructure provider and Rational Software Development Platform and Rational Developer for System z as the tools contributors. These tools providers each supply a set of language-specific development tools that run on Eclipse. Rational Software Development Platform provides tools to support the development of Web sites and Java applications (among others), while Rational Developer for System z provides the tools to support the development, maintenance, and Web service enablement of enterprise applications written in COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, and other traditional languages.

Rational Developer for System z is composed of many sets of views. Generally speaking, a view serves a particular purpose in the development environment, and a set of coherent views, or a perspective, serves a particular mission. For instance, the z/OS® Projects perspective is composed of views such as the z/OS Projects view, the Editor, the Remote Systems view, the Team view, the Properties view, the Outline view, the Remote Error List view, the z/OS File System Mapping view, and the Remote System Details view. Each of these views lets a user perform certain tasks. Collectively, these views make up the z/OS Projects perspective, whose mission is to support the development and maintenance of enterprise applications running on CICS®, IMS™, or DB2®.

Understanding the Rational Developer for System z architecture

The z/OS operating system is very different from a workstation operating system architecturally. To facilitate the correct transport of remote system data sets and files to a disparate system like Windows, one must explicitly define to Rational Developer for System z the following parameters:
  1. Mapping, which defines the following file transfer parameters:
    1. the file type to be transported (file extension mapping)
    2. the transfer mode (text or binary transfer)
    3. the code pages used on each of the two systems
  2. Port - the communication “channel” used for the transport between the two systems.
The following section describes briefly what these parameters are and the roles that each plays in Rational Developer for System z.
  1. Mapping
    • File type, transfer mode, and code page.

      Most operating systems recognize and differentiate files by their file extensions. For example, a file with the extension .txt is processed as a text file, while a file with the extension .html is processed as a hypertext language file. On the z/OS system, however, the concept of file extensions does not exist. Therefore, each data set type or file, whether it is a PL/I source file or a COBOL copybook, must be explicitly defined in Rational Developer for System z so that it is transported to the workstation and processed correctly.

      In addition to defining file type, it is also important to specify whether to transport a file as text or as binary. Transfer mode takes care of that.

      Finally, a computer system translates keyboard inputs to character values and vice versa, according to the code page specified on each system. While z/OS systems employ the EBCDIC family of code pages, most workstation systems employ the ASCII family of code pages. When a file is transported between these two operating systems, it is important that code page conversion be taken into account so that a file can be translated and displayed correctly on the destination system. Rational Developer for System z handles this translation automatically, but to do so, it needs to know in advance what code pages are being used on the z/OS system and the workstation system respectively. The host code page and the local code page specification supply Rational Developer for System z with this information.

    • Configuration of mapping.

      The configurable mapping serves to accomplish these objectives. Rational Developer for System z provides a set of mapping defaults to simplify the set up. For instance, by default, all data sets with an end qualifier COBOL are mapped to the extension .cbl and to the text transfer mode so that their members would be treated as COBOL source files when transported and opened on the workstation. Similarly, load modules with the end qualifier "LOAD" are mapped to .exe, and are treated as binary files on the workstation when transported. Each z/OS system can have its own mapping. You can customize mapping to suit your site's need by using the z/OS File System Mapping view.

  2. Port

    A port can be thought of as an agreed upon communication channel between the Rational Developer for System z remote system components of a given z/OS system and the Rational Developer for System z workstation component. Typically, a site's system programmer would have a port number defined for each of the two key Rational Developer for System z remote system components: the Remote Daemon port or the REXEC port found in Server Launcher Setting and the JES Job Monitor port during installation. In setting up Rational Developer for System z to connect to a z/OS system, you must enter these port numbers during the connection creation process to facilitate remote system-workstation communication.

Working with Rational Developer for System z

One of the challenging adjustments for an experienced ISPF user to make is the transition from ISPF's menu-driven interface to a graphical user interface (GUI) that is composed of views. To understand how to work with these views, you must first understand the functions supported by each view. The following is a brief description of the primary purpose of some of the key views in Rational Developer for System z, and the kind of tasks that can be performed with each of them. Additional details of these views can be found in the documentation.
  • Remote Systems

    This view supports the connection to z/OS remote systems, among others. Once a connection configuration is created, you can browse through remote data sets, files, jobs, and others using this view.

    ISPF utilities functions such as data set allocation, rename, or delete (ISPF option 3.2), move and copy (3.3), data set listing (3.4) and other common utilities can be performed using the capabilities provided on this view.

    Similarly, jobs submitted to the job subsystems can be viewed and manipulated under the JES subsystem found in your z/OS system connection definition. You can view a list of jobs, and perform operations such as view output, purge, cancel, hold and others against these jobs. If you want a detailed view of these jobs, you also have the option to display these jobs in a tabular view (select Show in Table from the context menu), which provides a more ISPF-like tabular view of your jobs. To view job output, highlight any completed job and select Open. Job outputs are displayed on the default text editor.

    For information on how to set up a z/OS connection configuration and create filters to view your data sets and jobs, please refer to Creating a connection to a remote system.

  • z/OS Projects

    The z/OS Projects view provides an application-centric view of your data sets and files. You can create a project to organize the data sets and files pertaining to a particular application for a given release. Application oriented actions such as debug and build are supported through this view.

  • System z LPEX Editor

    The System z LPEX Editor is the default editor for editing PL/I, COBOL, and Assembler source files, among others. The System z LPEX Editor extends the base LPEX editor to provide System z-specific capabilities such as syntax checking for these languages, content assist, opening a referenced copybook or include file, the ability to submit a job directly from the editor view, and so forth. The System z LPEX Editor is opened when you highlight a remote source file, and select Open. For more information on using the LPEX Editor, see A Quick Start Guide for the System z LPEX Editor.

  • Remote Shell

    The Remote Shell view provides a command line interface to support the execution of TSO commands. You can run commands, CLIST, and REXX from the command line and view the output on the same view. The command inputs and outputs can also be saved.

    The Remote Shell view can be opened by selecting TSO Commands in the Remote System Explorer and clickingLaunch TSO.

  • Remote Error List

    The Remote Error List view displays errors resulted from failed operations. Errors such as syntax errors, build problems, code generation and others are displayed on this tabular view.

  • Properties

    The Properties view displays attributes and attribute values of the currently-selected resource. For example, if a data set is selected in the Remote Systems view, the Properties view will list its attributes (BLKSIZE, LRECL, VOLUME, and so forth) and their respective values. Similarly, if a z/OS system is selected, then its connection attributes (system name, code page, job port, and so forth) and their respective values are displayed.

Some tips on using the Eclipse user interface

  1. You can customize the layout and content of any perspectives on Rational Developer for System z by dragging and dropping the views and move them to the desirable location on the user interface. You can also close a view if you do not need the view for your task. To bring a closed view back, simply use the menu Window -> Show View to bring the view back to the user interface. Closing a view would not modify or delete any of its content.
  2. You can quickly maximize the viewing area of a view by double clicking the title of a view. This is especially useful for some of the views such as the System z LPEX Editor and the JES subsystem. To restore the viewing area to the original size, simply double click the view title again.

Help

Rational Developer for System z help information is delivered via the integrated Eclipse help system. To open it, go to the Help menu and select Help Content.

Information contents are organized in “books." Each book provides content on a specific topic or area.

There are two common ways of accessing the contents. You can either use the navigator on the left pane to explore the available help content, or you can use the search function to search for a particular item of interest. By default, the search is performed across all the books. If you want to narrow down the search context, you can restrict the search to a user-defined scope by selecting the Advanced search scope option. The Advanced search feature is recommended if your search result list is consistently too long or contains too many irrelevant results.

The information contents are displayed on the right pane. If you want to print out the information, press the Print button located on the top right corner of the right pane, and then follow your printer's instruction.


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