If you’ve spent your career in ISPF, the idea of editing a file at a bare shell prompt probably sounds like a step backward. No split screens, no PF keys taped to your muscle memory, no line commands. Just a blinking cursor. Here’s the good news: vim isn’t a downgrade, it’s a different keyboard for … Read more
When you make code changes to files – typically COBOL, JCL, or PL/I program source, IDz marks the changed line(s) with light-gray rectangles in the left Annotations/frame area of your editor pane (See Figure 1). This Annotations area is a white vertical bar immediately to the left of the Prefix Area. Note also that the … Read more
Not everyone pounds code 8, 10, 12 hours/day – at least not all the time. And when you’re not typing you’re thinking/analyzing – and when you’re studying COBOL or PL/I (or Assembler) applications there will be occasions aplenty where you’re on the hunt for something – and need (momentarily) to go somewhere else -be it … Read more
If you’ve been using IDz for a while, you’re surely familiar with filters when browsing your MVS, JES, or Unix subsystems. If you’ve gotten to the point that you have to scroll up and down to view all your filters, you’re likely in need of turning on Filter Pools. A z/OS system can have hundreds, … Read more
I’ve recently worked with a customer who could not find good documentation on how to apply token licenses to his Rational Team Concert server. Here are some concise instructions on how to handle this as the Knowledge center is rather sparse on this topic. This topic applies to several products including: Rational Team Concert (soon … Read more
IBM now offers a new and much easier way to install IBM HTTP Server. You can now download IHS as an archive from IBM’s fix central. This is available for 9.0.0.6 and above, and is a super fast way to install/setup an HTTP server that properly front ends a WebSphere environment.Installing is as simple as: … Read more
Using IBM Developer for z Systems you can debug any language on the mainframe. For those who have taken Jon Sayle’s classes before, you know you can use IDz to generate JCL that will compile, link, and debug your code. The JCL is generated from a property group. However, what do you do if you … Read more
What are Filters? Filters are used to display groups or subsets of data sets in the MVS subsystem. Filters can be setup to show all or a portion of datasets within a high level qualifier. They can also be configured to have multiple filter strings such that they can display datasets or portions of datasets … Read more
During some courseware authoring I discovered a poorly known (but sufficiently documented) feature in Rational Developer for IBM i (and also available in IBM Developer for System z). Both tools use the LPEX editor as the default editor for source (although IDz has dedicated editors for COBOL, JCL, PL/I, and C/C++). The LPEX editor has … Read more
Break down the silos Mainframe development does not and should not be that much different from distributed development. There is a strong desire to modernize the development and operations of mainframe systems (zDevOps), to increase business agility, improve customer satisfaction, accelerate business value delivery, and to improve developer job satisfaction. One of the areas to … Read more