SDA and RDA is now “RDS” or “RDPi”?, A.K.A. Eclipse

April 2010

IBM Rational Developer for i (renamed in 2008 from WDSc), has been withdrawn from market and is replaced by the Rational Developer for Power Systems Software – RPG and COBOL Development Tools for IBM i.

The latest release of Rational Developer for Power includes all of the features of Rational Developer for i (RDi / WDSc) plus exciting new features such as:
Screen Designer for visual design of DDS display files.
Report Designer for visual design of DDS printer files.

Existing Rational Developer for i and Rational Developer for i for SOA Construction users who are current on software subscription and support are entitled to the RPG and COBOL Development Tools for IBM i feature of Rational Developer for Power.

from www-01.IBM.com/software/awdtools/developer/rdi/

The longest-standing complaint - IBM hasn't believed that programming tools sell computers - is the antique terminal, green screen, PDM, editing environment of the AS/400 aka iSeries. Third parties have provided partial pc-workstation-based improvements just like IBM came up with a partial pc-based alternative with WebSphere (but it did not provide an alternative to SDA or RDA). Now, IBM has, finally, made full use of the open source, Eclipse IDE, as it intended to from the beginning, and, has, this time, by adding iSeries specific plug-ins to it, put their own name on it ... and a price!.

History
Eclipse began as an IBM Canada project in 1998. It was developed by Object Technology International (OTI) as a Java-based replacement for the Smalltalk based VisualAge family of IDE products, which itself had been developed by OTI. In November 2001, a consortium was formed to further the development of Eclipse as open source. IBM saw it as critical for achieving broad adoption of Eclipse. Initial members with IBM included WebGain and Borland.
The consortium's operating principles assumed that the open source community would control the code and the commercial consortium would drive "marketing" and commercial relations. It was still based on an open, free platform, but that base would be complemented by commercial companies encouraged to create for-profit tools built on top of it. Still, major vendors were reluctant. Eclipse had to be more independent - more decoupled from IBM.
The Eclipse Foundation was created with its own independent, paid professional staff, supported by dues from member companies.

In December 2004, IBM Rational aggressively revamped its product portfolio to move to a more Eclipse-based foundation and, referred to the result as the IBM "Rational Software Development Platform", which includes new and improved products from IBM Rational, all built directly on top of the Eclipse platform. Eclipse has become IBM's next-generation tools integration platform.

from an article by Gary Cernosek, IBM, "A brief history of Eclipse"

Eclipse, with example php source:

Move Over SDA, RDPi is in the House:

a new Screen Designer.

The longest-standing complaint about WDSC and its successors has been the "green screen" lack of a graphical design tool for display files. (DSPF)

Let's start with an overall view of the tool (in fact, RDPi can actually make use of multiple monitors because you can tear away some of the views).

On the right side of the workbench, the lower quadrant contains a WYSIWYG, green screen, editor, which shows the current screen. The concept of a screen is something new that we've sorely needed for a long time; you’re able to group related display-file records into a screen and see them together on the designer with a simple mouse click. Screens and records are managed in the view immediately above the WYSIWYG screen

You can create as many screens as you want, and each screen can contain any of the records in the display file. The included records then appear together in the WYSIWYG designer, with the selected record highlighted.

You can see the subfile fields are highlighted and the fields from the subfile control record CTL1 are grayed out. Here's a primary productivity point: you can switch between editing the subfile and the control record (and any other in the screen) by simply clicking on that record in the screen manager. Contrast that with the multiple steps required to select a different record in Screen Design Aid (SDA) (not to mention the fact that there's really no concept of permanently associating multiple records into a screen).

To the right of the WYSIWYG screen is the palette, the standard technique used to add components to a graphical designer; you drag something from the palette and drop it on the display. Developer's hint: The Palette view is normally a separate view, which can be a little annoying if you need to maximize the editor, because the Palette then disappears. However, if you close the Palette view, an integrated version appears within the WYSIWYG designer itself. That's what you see in Figure 1.

To create the image in Figure 1, I rearranged the workbench and created my own custom perspective (a feature RDPi owes to its Eclipse ancestry), which takes full advantage of my real estate. I stacked all of my miscellaneous views to the lower left. These are views I like to have available, but I don't need all the time, such as the command log (which among other things shows me the completion status of my recent host commands). Immediately above those I put the Outline view.

Not only have I expanded the XXCMCUST field to show its attributes, but I also expanded the CTL1 record and drilled all the way down into the conditioning indicators for the SFLDSPCTL keyword. This view is something I use in all of my programming; versions exist for all programming languages including RPG and Java. The version for Display File DDS really enhances the Screen Designer. Not only does it provide a highly detailed hierarchical view of the entire display file, it's also an excellent navigation aid. If I click on a field in the Outline, that field is highlighted in the WYSIWYG display (and vice versa). This is another productivity boost: when you click on a field in a record, that record becomes active.

The highlighted field also becomes the current field in the Properties panel (upper left panel). Figure 1 shows the properties for the REFFLD keyword when referring to a database field. All of the attributes of the keyword are mapped out and you can use the Browse button to go to the database on the IBM i and select a specific field. The Properties view isn't limited just to fields either.

Here you see the Properties page that is assigned to the subfile record SFL1. You can view this page by clicking on a subfile record in the Outline or on any of the record-level keywords for either a subfile record or its corresponding subfile control record. This page is actually rather unique in that it appears for either the subfile or the subfile control, but that makes sense because the keywords apply to both records simultaneously; you really can't separate the two. You can click on either record, then click on the tab labeled “Subfile Control,” and you'll see something like the image in Figure 4. I like that both size-related keywords are available with brief descriptions to help differentiate them. I’ve gotten SFLSIZ and SFLPAG confused since my System/38 days.

I could continue on from here. For example, I haven't even touched on how the WYSIWYG panel works or how easy it is to create popup windows. Be sure to get your trial copy of RDPi and start working with it; I think you'll be able to justify it in no time, just with the Screen Designer productivity benefits.

see full, original article at  ibmsystemsmag.com