Rational Developer for System z

Message modeling concepts

Message modeling is a way of predefining the message formats used by your applications.

Once you have modeled your messages, products like Rational® Developer for System z® can use your message models to automatically parse and write your message formats.

When you model messages you need to understand the following concepts:

Figure 1 shows how these topics relate to one another.
Figure 1. Message modeling concepts
Overview of message model
A message set is a logical grouping of your messages and the objects that comprise them (elements, types, groups). The content of a message set is:

The message set file provides message model information that is common across all the messages in the message set. You can modify this information using the flow message set editor.

You typically import application message formats described by COBOL structures to create and populate a message file (also called a message definition file). You can then edit the logical structure of your messages, and create and edit physical formats that describe the precise appearance of your message bit stream during transmission, using the flow message editor. Alternatively, you can create an empty message file and create your messages using just the editor.

When your message files are complete, you can then generate the message set in a form that can be used by an application. This could be as:

Each time you save a message set file or message file, the content is validated to ensure that the message model you are creating follows certain rules. There are rules for both the logical structure and the physical formats. The validation ensures the integrity of your model, but does not necessarily prevent you saving an invalid message model file.


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