Strongback Consulting specializes in enterprise modernization and application lifecycle management, focusing on various industries including finance, healthcare, and government. The document highlights the benefits and features of Rational Developer for System z, which enhances application development and maintenance for COBOL and other languages through modern IDE features and robust analytic tools. The software aids in code analysis, debugging, and productivity improvements, with a comprehensive overview of tools for efficient source code management and modernization.

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About Us: Strongback Consulting
• IBM Advanced Business Partner
– Rational, WebSphere, Lotus, Information Management SVP certified
– Strongly focused on Enterprise Modernization and application lifecycle management
– Key Industries Served: Finance, Insurance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Government
– Rational Design Partner for HATS and other Rational enterprise modernization technologies
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http://www.linkedin.com/company/290754

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Agenda
• The view from the programmer analyst
• How to conduct archaeology on your source code
• Analytic tooling within Rational Developer for System z
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A day in the life of a software archaeologist

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What the code reminds you of….
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Definition: White Elephant
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A white elephant is an idiom
for a valuable but burdensome
possession of which its owner
cannot dispose and whose cost
(particularly cost of upkeep) is
out of proportion to its
usefulness or worth.
Source: wikipedia.org

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The white elephant: 12,000 lines of spaghetti
• Where do you start?
• Unpredictable abends
• Hard to navigate
• Difficult to create a “mental map”
• Potentially lots of dead code
• Out of date comments
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Rational Developer for System z v9.0
The modern development environment for the modern mainframe
“Working across several source code files and copy books– and
debugging at the same time!– is game changing.”
COBOL Application Programmer
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Modern IDE features to pull-in new developers to
System z application development with rich, modern
development for COBOL, PL/I, Java, JCL, CICS, IMS,
Batch, Stored Procedure
Powerful, easy to use editors with immediate, inline
assistance and navigation of host-based resources
Build & debug across complex application layers and
boundaries
Design, code, build, test, and deploy mobile apps that
run on a wide variety of mobile platforms; Quickly
refactor and extend existing back-end services and data
to new mobile UIs
Code analysis that warns you about poorly written
code
What’s new:
•Support for CICS TS 5.1 & optimized COBOL v5
compiler
•Enhanced JCL editing
•Automate unit testing with zUnit
•Headless code review and code coverage

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Modern application development across platforms
Upgrade to modern Eclipse-based tools to develop and maintain
enterprise applications spanning multiple platforms, languages and technologies
 Rational Developer for System z
 Rational Developer for zEnterprise Increase Productivity
 Eclipse-based open source IDE
 More attractive to recent university hires than
legacy
z/OS tooling
 More relevant information is readily available
 Speeds development with specialized editors and code
generation wizards
 Code assist, syntax highlighting, quick fixes, outline view
 Accelerate application modernization
 Enable CICS and IMS appls for Web Services / SOA
 Lower skill requirements for new hires to code to
complex architectures (e.g. Web 2.0)
 Reduce Training Costs in adopting System z
environment
 Provides interactive access to z/OS for
development, debug, job generation, job
submission, monitoring and command execution
 Free up mainframe for production workload
 Workstation syntax checking reduces host workload
 Unit Test feature offloads additional workload
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IDE Efficiency Benchmarks
 An IBM productivity study concluded that RDz significantly improves productivity as compared to
ISPF
• 100 common (daily) ISPF tasks used during maintenance and support assignments
– ISPF workflow translated (click-for-click) to RDz development
– Project participants believed they were trying to find gaps between RDz and ISPF functionality
• Mix of experienced (veteran) ISPF programmers and new-hire developers
• Assumption was that only new-hire developers would be more productive
– This turned out to be false
% less time to complete System z application development tasks using RDz vs. ISPF
Inexperienced ISPF Users Experienced ISPF Users
Similar results
achieved by
Financial Services
customers

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RD z – More than just a pretty editor,
Its an Integrated Development Environment
• Rich Functionality
– Sophisticated application analysis and quality governance
– Extensive programming assists and wizards
– Seamless access to ISPF and eclipse-style editors
– Operational navigation between the integrated components
• Extensive functional integration
– Application Lifecycle Management solution - ISDz
– Problem Determination tools
– Mainframe security facilities
– Source Control Management products
– Any 3rd Party/OEM tools on the Eclipse platform
• World-wide partners and extensive Eco-system

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Viewing down into the pit
Program Control Flow
Diagram:
• Birds Eye view of source
• Treat it like a blueprint
• Navigable and linked to
source
• Export and save for
documentation
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Digging sideways – Performance Hierarchy
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Conditional
Statements
Perform Until
Statements
Potential
program
fall thru

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Finding nuggets of information
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Navigation with Outline View
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Sort
alphabetically
Hide
Divisions
Click on a
paragraph to
navigate to it
in source
view

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Find Dialog
• CTRL + F to bring up
dialog
• Can search case
sensitive, forward,
backward, on all code,
or just that selected.
• Regular expressions
– Content assist available
to help build a search
query
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Format source automagically
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You are no longer limited to tedious ISPF functions for indenting code!
Makes maintenance easier for all who follow you.

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Identify Unreachable Code
• Finds Dead Code
– Source → Find Unreachable Code
• Results mark lines or paragraphs
that will never get called
• Mark them out with Source→
Toggle Comments, then delete
when confirmed
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Editing Source Code
• System z LPEX Editor
– Can emulate ISPF line commands & functions
– Generic editor for all source
• Specific source editors to give a richer feel
– COBOL, PL/I
– C/C++
– JCL
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Hovers
• Hover mouse over a variable, or perform statement
• Popup displays the declaration
• Press F2 to make the window retain focus
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Hover over a Copy Statement
• Hold down CNTL key and hover over the copybook name
• Copybook name becomes a hyperlink
– click to open
– Also opens a hover window showing the contents of the window
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SYSLIB property
group must be set for
this to work

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Content Assist
• Shows list of valid variables, or language structures
• Intelligence to suggest SQL within an EXEC statement
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Quick Fix
• Margin area shows warnings and errors
• Quick fix suggestions show as a light bulb
• Parser is able to suggest fixes when clicked
• Click on the suggestion to make the change
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• Enable against
COBOL 4.2, or 5.1
(the latest version)
• Make checks for
EXEC statements
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Real Time Syntax Checking

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Refactoring
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Refactoring: make system-wide code changes without affecting the behavior of the
program.
Refactoring commands are available from the context menus of several views (e.g. Project
Explorer, Outline) and editors. Many "apparently simple" commands, such as Move and Rename,
are actually refactoring operations, since moving and renaming elements often require changes in
dependent files.
• Extract a function, constant or local variable
• Rename a method, variable or class
• Hide a method signature
Operations can be previewed for all of the changes resulting from a
refactoring action before you choose to carry them out.

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Extract Constant (C/C++)
• Improve performance, and avoid duplicate strings
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Renaming Variables
• Easily rename a variable throughout your code
– More accurate than find/replace
– Make variables easier to understand
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Source Actions
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Use the Source menu to perform many actions to modify, remove or
generate code automatically.
• Toggle a line or block as a comment; on or off.
• Format entire source files or fragments.
• Correct Indentation
• Implement getters & setters
• Sort lines
The Source menu can be accessed from many context views such as in the
COBOL, and C/C++ editor.

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Toggle Commenting on and off
• Toggle single line to comment on/off
• Toggle a block of lines to comment on/off
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Sorting Lines (C/C++)
• Make content easier to read by alphabetizing your
fields
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Surround With
• Easily move source into a conditional statement
– for loop
– do/while
– if/else
– try/catch
• Highlight the desired code, right click -> Surround With
– also ATL+SHIFT+Z

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Searching
• Multiple different types of search in the product
– Remote z/OS Search
– Data Model Search
– File system search (local)
– language based search (C/C++, Java, COBOL, etc)
• Called from the search bar
• Search from the context menu
• Or a keyboard shortcut CNTL + H

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Remote z/OS Search
• Remote z/OS Search uses the
RDz daemon on the server to
scan MVS assets
• Can scan through specific filters
• Can scan selected PDS’s and
members
• Can also scan offline & migrated
datasets
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Search Types
• By Partitioned Dataset Name
– search by name of the PDS only
• By Sequential Dataset
– Can search by name, or within the content
• By Dataset member
– Can search by name, or within the content
– Within name or content, can also search using regular expressions
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Search Contexts
• Searches only within a single LPAR (does not cross multiple systems)
• Search on existing filters
• Search within selected contexts
– Could be a filter, a dataset, a sequential dataset, or multiple selected datasets
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Using Regular Expressions to Search
• For example
custRec|tranRec
• This will search and find any line in the search context that has either
custRec, or tranRec
– The pipe symbol ‘|’ acts as an “or” statement
• Another example
intsw*s=
• This will find all integer instantiations with in the search context
– w* = any word char repeated more than once
– s = any whitespace character
– int and = are treated as normal characters
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Sub-setting search results
• Sort columns ascending or descending
• Expand source members to see lines where text was found
• Filter result list within the client
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Search Results
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Sortable
Columns
Source
Member
Lines in
source
where text
was found
Filter to sub
set results
Expand /
Collapse
results
Save results
to Favorites
Stop Search Edit query
parameters
View
Menu
Remove
matches
from view

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The My Favorites Folder
• Shows saved search queries
– Great for ready access to frequently searched phrases
• Save the search from the view menu
• Saved searches can be edited, and run again
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What is Software /Analyzer Code Review?
• Provides a means for you to enforce shop coding standards
and best practices
• Available for COBOL programs opened from:
– Remote Systems Explorer
– Local Workstation Projects – including a PDS downloaded to a local project
– z/OS Projects/MVS Subprojects
• Easy to use:
– Context-menu accessible - Create custom rule sets configuration based on in-the-box COBOL rules
– More requirements (from customers) are encouraged/gladly accepted

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Features
• Somewhat customizable:
– In-the-box rules customizable through Preferences/Configurations for
rules
• Application Code Review
– Expands on existing Java code review
– Check for COBOL standards deviations in the editor
– Run reports on standards compliance and trends
– Improve application quality and compliance
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COBOL & PL/I Rules
• Industry standard best practices
– Naming
– Performance
– Structure of programs
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Results
• Depending on which kind of analysis you are doing, the results view may differ. Some
results views, like the one provided by Java code review, support viewing results in
more than one format (a table or a tree, for example).
• If you right-click on a result, you can perform special tasks, such as viewing the source
code where the problem occurred or "quick fixing" the problem with an automatic
result.

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Resources
• Check out all our links for our presentations, including this one
• http://delicious.com/strongback/rdz
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Questions?

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http://www.linkedin.com/company/290754
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Discover us at:
http://www.strongback.us
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Call us at: 386-232-8746