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RDz shortcuts, tips, and tools
Skill Level: Intermediate
08 Feb 2011 Updated 08 Feb 2011 The IBM Rational Developer for System z IDE for mainframe and multiplatform development is popular for its major features, such as remote editing, remote debugging, source code management support, and web services for mainframe applications. This article describes 10 of the most useful of many lesser-known features that increase productivity for mainframe developers.
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Introduction
IBM Rational Developer for System z (often called RDz, informally) is a powerful set of tools for mainframe application developers. It provides editing and debugging capabilities for the most widely used mainframe programming languages in both local workstation and remote host contexts. It includes tools for linking applications to databases and enabling applications for service-oriented architecture (SOA), as well as an extensible client interface to source code management systems. It is built on the Eclipse platform and takes advantage of the extensible plug-in framework. These powerful features have made RDz a popular choice among mainframe application developers. In addition to those major features, IBM Rational developers have continually added features that improve usability and boost productivity for everyday users. These are often overshadowed by the capabilities provided by the major components, and many users haven't even discovered them. We compiled this list to bring attention to 10 of the most useful of these lesser-known features.
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(for example, Cntl+F10). From now on, the Preferences view is only a shortcut key away. Figure 1. The Keys preference page
Navigating tree views. In tree views such as the Remote Systems view, you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate the tree. Right expands a node and navigates to a child node in the tree, and Left collapses a node and navigates to a parent node. Up and Down buttons navigate the tree without expanding or collapsing nodes. In addition, you can use Backspace to quickly navigate to a parent node and, eventually, to the top level without collapsing any nodes. This trick can be useful when you are "deep down" in a tree view, and
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you want to avoid excessive vertical scrolling. Working with perspectives and views. In Eclipse, a perspective is simply a set of views. The views in a perspective are usually grouped logically by function. For example, the IBM z/OS Projects perspective contains the z/OS Projects view, the Remote Systems view, the Property Group Manager view, and other views by default. These are some of the views that are most helpful for developing z/OS projects. Meanwhile, the Enterprise Service Tools perspective contains the EST Project Explorer view and other views that are helpful in creating web services-related projects. The views for these two perspectives are laid out differently because of the different use patterns of typical users of those perspectives. However, you are not limited to the default perspective layouts. You can customize perspectives for optimal productivity. Simply drag one view to a different part of the workbench if you can use it more effectively somewhere else. You can use the Minimize, Maximize, and Restore buttons at the upper-right of each view to optimize screen real estate. Overlapping views in the same screen region can be hidden and shown all at once by using these buttons. Experiment a little to get the layout that works for you. In addition to arranging the layout of the perspective, you can alter the views that are present in the perspective. For example, if you are developing a program in the z/OS Projects perspective that involves a database defined in the Data perspective, you do not need to repeatedly switch between the two perspectives. You can simply add the Data Source Explorer view, the SQL Results view, and whatever other views you need to the z/OS Projects perspective. To add a view to a perspective, select a view from the Window > Show View menu (Figure 2).
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Fast view. Perhaps you prefer to maximize the language editor while editing source code. In this case, it is helpful to be able to access additional views without switching out of the maximized mode. For example, it is often useful to access the Outline view to quickly navigate to different locations of the open source file. To open a Fast view: 1. Type Alt+Shift+Q.
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Type O (letter O) to display the outline, or S (the letter S) to display the search results. This will overlay the selected view on top of the maximized editor, allowing you to interact with it.
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1.
Select the outline element or search result that you want to navigate to. When you are finished, press the Esc key to close the Fast view and return to the editor. Error log. When an error or warning occurs in the workbench, it gets logged in the .log file in the workspace metadata. You do not need to leave the workbench to view this data. You can simply open the Error Log view. This view also provides export and import capabilities so that you can examine old logs.
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Starting with Rational Developer for System z Version 8.0.1, you can very quickly search for and retrieve data sets and jobs in the Remote Systems view without defining a filter. Create a filter while retrieving a data set or job
When using the Retrieve Data Set or Retrieve Job dialogs, you have the option of creating a filter for the results listed in the dialog.
To retrieve a data set, select MVS Files in the Remote Systems view, open the context menu, and select Retrieve Data Set, or use the shortcut key CTRL+R. This will bring up the Retrieve Data Set dialog window, where you can type the name of a data set or use a pattern. Figure 5. The Retrieve Data Set dialog
When you select a data set and press OK, the data set is added to the Retrieved Data Sets container in the Remote Systems view.
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Figure 6. The Retrieved Data Sets container in the Remote Systems view
Similarly, you can retrieve a job by selecting JES and selecting Retrieve Job from the context menu (or by using the shortcut key Ctrl+J) and specifying a job prefix). Jobs retrieved in this way are added to the Retrieved Jobs container in the Remote Systems view.
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Figure 7. The COBOL Editor with a long cursor in Block Selection Mode
Now you can use the space and backspace keys to fine-tune the alignment of the text to the right of the cursor. Also, because typing text with a long cursor will insert the characters in every row of the cursor's height, you can alter a whole block of record numbers at once.
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Figure 8. The COBOL editor with modified record numbers using a long cursor
The LPEX editor has a similar function that supports moving columns from multiple rows at a time. First, move the cursor to the starting location of the block of text you want to move. Press ALT+R to enter rectangular selection mode. Extend the selection to the height of the text you want to move. This can be done using the mouse or holding Shift and using Up or Down.
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Use ALT+F7 to shift the text one space to the left, and ALT+F8 to move the text to the right. When you are finished, press ALT+U to clear the selection. Unlike the COBOL and PL/I Editors, the rectangular selection mode of the LPEX editor does not support typing text into multiple rows at a time.
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was supposed to be extracted. Using the Outline view, you can remove the mapping that represents the bad extract, and then create a new extract for the item number field, and continue recording your flow as normal. Figure 10. Fixing a mistake in the flow recorder by using the Remove Mapping action
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Figure 11. The Host Properties tab of the Host Connection Emulator
6. Lookup view
Installation note
To use the Lookup view, the Fault Analyzer Integration feature must be installed when installing RDz.
Every mainframe application developer needs to analyze an abend from time to time. Rational Application Developer for System z makes it easy to look up abend codes using the Lookup view. In this view you can search for and read about MVS, CICS User, IMS User and Language Environment abend codes. To open this view, select Window > Show View > Other, and then, in the Show View dialog window, select Fault Analyzer > Lookup.
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After the query is saved into the My Search Queries container, it can be edited or run at any time. Figure 14. The My Search Queries container in the Remote Systems view
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Therefore, a lot of your time might be spent in this editor. Here are some tips that will improve your productivity: Open Data Set Member From JCL - While editing a JCL file, highlight the full name of any data set member in the format data.set(member), open the context menu, and select Open Member. Match PL/I Constructs - The shortcut key CTRL+M matches language contructs when editing a PL/I file. Autosave - The System z LPEX Editor autosaves your work in an edit session to allow recovery of unsaved changes in case of a crash. Multi-view - Sometimes it is helpful to have more than one view of the same source file. CTRL+2 adds a new view to the editor, and ALT+SHIFT+RIGHT can be used to move between the views. CTRL+0 can be used to close the added view. Line Select - ALT+L selects a line of text. If you then move the cursor to another line and press ALT+L again, all the lines between the first and second selected line will be selected. Hex Edit - You can edit the hexadecimal encoding of any line of text in the System z LPEX Editor by opening the context menu and selecting Source > Hex edit line. Find/Replace - Use CTRL+F to show the find/replace panel. The find field supports regular expressions features such as OR (|). LPEX Command Line - The System z LPEX Editor contains a command line that can be used to enter LPEX commands. LPEX commands are case sensitive. Some of the most useful commands are: help or ? brings up the LPEX help help lpex brings up the key bindings for the LPEX profile mode help ispf brings up the key bindings for the ISPF profile mode submit submits the JCL that is currently being edited arrow keys can be used in the command line to recall commands /text or 'text finds the next occurrence of the specified text (precede with minus sign to search backward: -/text or -'text) lineNumber locates the specified line
10 little-known features in Rational Developer for System z that increase mainframe developers' productivity Copyright IBM Corporation 2011. All rights reserved.
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