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About Us LongEx Mainframe Quarterly - August 2022
Consulting
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Training
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management: What Can We Get from IDEs?  techn
FAQ
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In the Community If you're as old as me, the chances are that you still code using the
 opini
standard ISPF 3270 screen. The biggest change in the past 20 years has
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probably been the HILITE feature that can colour code source like JCL and
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COBOL.
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But if you're just Can W
Our Articles
starting with z/OS, IDEs?
Free Tools and Code you'll probably look at
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ISPF screens, and think
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Basic Features perfor
Anything that has a GUI screen and controlled by a mouse is going to have
advantages over the ISPF editor. For a start, IDE have more screen room:
you can see more code in a screen. ISPF will show between 24 and 40
lines: IDz can show up to 190 lines in split screen mode. Scrolling up and
down code using a mouse or scrollbars will always be faster than those PF7
and PF8 keys.
Navigation around programs is also faster. Most IDEs provide screens so
you can get a 10,000 foot view of the code you're looking at, and navigate
around it. For example, IDz can show the program flow of a COBOL
program in a diagram:

Click on each section to jump to that part off the code.

Searching is also faster, and IDEs provide screens so you can more easily
see hits, and where they are in the code.
All IDEs colour code source code to make it easier to view. For example,
IDz editing a COBOL program will look something like this:
But even better, most will perform syntax checking in real-time. If there is
a syntax error, it is highlighted. IDz shows an exclamation mark next to
lines in error.

In this example, WS-I cannot store numbers as high as 100,000, and the
CALL statement has a missing single quote.
Many IDEs can flag not just syntax errors in programming languages like
COBOL or PL/I, but also SQL statements, IMS DL/I statements, and EXEC
CICS calls. Many can also flag errors in JCL, REXX scripts and more.
If you reference a variable in code, often a mouseover will show the
variable's declaration, and sometimes other information:

One of the biggest issues when using ISPF to edit code is to move around
includes and copybooks. Often, programmers will look at a compiler listing
rather than original code to see includes and copybooks. Many IDEs
provide features that can be used to view copybooks by mouseover or
other feature.
More Advanced Editing Features
The above features are found in most IDEs: free and commercial. However,
there are other features found in some, but not all IDEs.
For example, many provide a 'snippet' feature: include commonly used
code with the click of a mouse. Users can define their own snippets, or
there may be pre-canned ones. As an example, IDz has a wizard for
creating a new COBOL program that instantly provides the basic
statements.
Some also allow rules to be coded. For example, a site may discourage
Goto statements by highlighting them, or requiring that variable names
follow a set naming convention.
Some IDEs also go further: providing code analysis tools. For example, IDz
can provide code complexity metrics for source code. Identification of dead
code (code that can never be accessed) can also be found.
Working with Jobs and Datasets
Many IDEs provide features to work with batch jobs: editing JCL,
submitting jobs, viewing the status of jobs in JES, and viewing any output.
For example, the following screen shows Zowe Explorer exploring batch
jobs and batch output.

IDEs also provide features for working with z/OS datasets: listing,
browsing, editing, copying, renaming, deleting, allocating, migrating. The
following shows IDz listing datasets, and showing some options available
for each:
 What This Means
This is not a comprehensive list of all the benefits of each IDE, but shows
some of the more commonly seen features. So, what does this mean?
The idea is to improve the productivity of hard-to-find mainframe
developers. The hope is that these tools will make it faster for them to do
the day-to-day tasks. But how much of a productivity benefit can we really
get from these features? In 2010, IBM did a benchmark test, comparing
ISPF with IDz (then Rational Developer for z). This measured a 27%
reduction in the amount of time required to do basic tasks when using RDz
for mainframe users with 15+ years of ISPF experience.
Another idea of IDEs is to make it easier for new mainframe staff to
become productive. This same study also measured the productivity of
staff new to ISPF. Adding these to the pool, the study measured a 50%
reduction in time required.
So, IDEs are not just to make developer lives easier, but can lead to
increased productivity.

David Stephens

LongEx Quarterly is a quarterly eZine produced by Longpela Expertise. It

provides Mainframe articles for management and technical experts. It is
published every November, February, May and August.
The opinions in this article are solely those of the author, and do not
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Although Longpela Expertise may be paid by organisations reprinting our
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