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Meet the experts: Reginaldo Barosa on WebSphere Developer for System z

Reginaldo Barosa (rbarosa@us.ibm.com), Senior Certified IT Specialist, IBM　

Reginaldo W. Barosa is an IBM Certified Application Development Specialist. He provides sales support, helping customers with enterprise transformation solutions and development tools, such as WebSphere Developer for System z. Before joining IBM US, Reginaldo worked for 27 years in IBM Brazil. He has co-authored IBM Redbooks and has written books, as well as other articles for IBM developerWorks. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Instituto Mau de Tecnologia, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Summary: WebSphere® consultant Reginaldo Barosa answers questions on WebSphere Developer for System z.

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Date: 07 Mar 2007
Level: Intermediate

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Introduction

WebSphere consultant Reginaldo Barosa answers your questions on using WebSphere Developer for System z®. He answers questions about replacing the traditional TSO/ISPF development, connecting to z/OS®, editing COBOL, PL/I, or C/C++, and building, testing, and debugging batch or online programs and checking the results. Besides the traditional development that replaces TSO/ISPF, WebSphere Developer for System z is a must for developers who need to create, deploy, and test z/OS assets that must handle XML and create or consume Web services using CICS® or IMS®.

Question: What is the productivity improvement using WebSphere Developer for System z (hereafter called WebSphere Developer) compared to a traditional TSO/ISPF development?

Answer: I would say that it depends on the developer. I have seen developers do magic using the "old" TSO/ISPF. Developers without much green screen experience will hate TSO/ISPF, but when they use WebSphere Developer, they probably will be as productive and fast as an experienced TSO/ISPF developer. The production increases when the applications get more complex. Also there are situations where you need tools that are not available in TSO/ISPF, such as wizards to create Web services for CICS® and IMS®. Take a look at a Developer Productivity Study by the Branham Group, which compares IBM WebSphere Developer for System z to traditional IBM mainframe development tools.

Question: If I want to develop Java™ and COBOL for z/OS™, do I need both Rational Application Developer (RAD) for developing Java, and also WebSphere Developer for COBOL? What if I want to also use the IBM Host Access Services (HATS), will it be a third product?

Answer: No, you just need WebSphere Developer for Java and COBOL. WebSphere Developer is installed on top of RAD, like an extension of RAD and it is a superset of this product. If you also need HATS, you can install it on top of WebSphere Developer.

Question: Do I really need WebSphere Developer to transform an existing COBOL CICS program and transform it in services, if I am using CICS Transaction Server for z/OS v2.3?

Answer: Technically, the answer is no. But, WebSphere Developer will definitely improve your productivity. If you are using CICS v2.3 and the SOAP for CICS feature to create Web services, you need to create adapters. If you are using Enterprise COBOL, you can take advantage of the XML Parse statement. However, creating those COBOL adapters with TSO/ISPF will not be easy. WebSphere Developer has wizards that generate the COBOL adapters and the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). WebSphere Developer also has a Web Service Test facility that allows you to invoke the service using the WSDL generated.

Question: If I am using CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.1, do I still need WebSphere Developer since this version allows CICS applications to be exposed as Web services?

Answer: Again, technically, the answer is no, but WebSphere Developer can help you. This CICS version has a facility called CICS Web services Assistant based on z/OS batch utilities. These utilities transform existing CICS applications into Web services and enable CICS applications to use Web services provided by external providers with minimum programming effort. You need to create converter that will do the parsing in situations like:

You don't want to have the application data structure being parsed by CICS, but by your program adapter instead.
You want to send to parse one input field, such as Customer_Number, not the all customer structure data.
The COBOL structure has OCCURS DEPENDING ON and REDEFINES on the data description. (The CICS Web Services Assistant does not support it).

Also remember that WebSphere Developer can help you with testing, using WSDL to invoke the service deployed, even if you are doing all implementations with CICS facilities.

Question: What are the workstation prerequisites for WebSphere Developer?

Answer: The minimum hardware and software prerequisites are listed in the WebSphere Developer for System z v7.0 page.

Question: What are the host components prerequisites for WebSphere Developer?

Answer: You can get all the required host prerequisites in the WebSphere Developer for System z v7.0 page. If you need more details, see Prerequisites for WebSphere Developer for System z v7.0 that you can download. Note that some prerequisites or co-requisites refer to IBM products that are supported and do not mean that it will not work in an older version. For example, you can work with COBOL that is not the Enterprise version. However, if you have an issue with this COBOL level, you will be on your own because you are not at the IBM supported version of the product.

Question: Is the Debug Tool for z/OS a required product to work with WebSphere Developer?

Answer: The Debug Tool is not required, but you will be missing some functions. The tool allows you to debug z/OS programs and shows the results in one of the WebSphere Developer perspectives. Since WebSphere Developer is installed on top of Rational Application Developer, it allows cross-platform interactive testing, debugging, and deploying of JSP, servlets, EJB, and HTML files on local and remote Web application servers as well as z/OS CICS, IMS/DC, batch, DB2®, and UNIX System Services debugging of COBOL, PL/I, C, C++ and assembler applications.

Question: Does WebSphere Developer support non-IBM debug tools? If so, how and what functions are supported?

Answer: If you use the Host Connection Emulation within WebSphere Developer, it emulates host screens inside of WebSphere Developer, which accesses just about any "Brand X" debugger that runs on the mainframe. However, you will not have access to this debugger via the WebSphere Developer Debug Perspective. You cannot do end to end debug, as explained in the previous question, when you run different components like JSP, Java, and so on. For an example of an end to end debug, take a look at the "WDz 6.0.1 Debug - JSP, EGL, COBOL, Java" demo at the IBM WebSphere Application Transformation Demos site.

Question: Does IBM suggest that I install the latest fixes on Rational Application Development before completing the install of WebSphere Developer? If so, how do I install the fixes on RAD?

Answer: I will assume this question relates to the latest version of WebSphere Developer for System z, version 7. When you install WebSphere Developer, you also install the IBM "Installation Manager". This artifact handles the updates for both WebSphere Developer and RAD. The easiest way is to install RAD and WebSphere Developer, and then run the IBM Install Manager to update everything.

Question: I noticed that EGL is not part of WebSphere Developer for System z v7 as it was on v6. Where is EGL these days?

Answer: IBM is currently updating and enhancing the EGL development tools and plans to make them available in early 2007, maintaining full upward compatibility with previous versions of EGL. WebSphere Developer for zSeries v6 customers who currently use EGL should continue to develop EGL applications using WebSphere Developer for zSeries v6 until the equivalent EGL functionality becomes available as a product extension to WebSphere Developer for System z v7.0 and other Software Development Platform products. These customers are entitled to obtain the EGL Extension product.

VisualAge Generator customers should consider converting their applications to EGL and migrating to WebSphere Developer for zSeries v6 or Rational Application Developer v6. These converted applications are upwardly, compatible to the EGL Extension product when it is available.

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