NetView Testing and Debugging Facilities

NetView provides several facilities to assist in testing and debugging automation procedures.

To do detailed testing, you may want to trace every statement issued from automation procedures. This type of testing is enabled through the &CONTROL statement for NetView command lists and through the TRACE statement for REXX procedures.

You can also specify less detailed tracing on the TRACE and &CONTROL statements, so that only commands are traced. A comparable facility, the interactive debugging aid, is available for programs coded in PL/I and C.

Perform specific tracing by issuing NetView MSG LOG, PIPE LOGTO NETLOG commands at appropriate points throughout a NetView command list, REXX procedure, or PL/I routine.

To test for proper parsing and reaction to a message, write a short automation procedure to issue a NetView WTO command. This WTO is processed by the NetView automation table and triggers the appropriate automation procedure. If the automation procedure requires the job name, the job name must be temporarily hard-coded to the appropriate name. In this case, because the WTO was issued from the NetView region, the job name associated with the message is the NetView region. A sample automation procedure follows:

WRITEWTO CLIST
   WTO &PARMSTR
   &EXIT

The sample automation procedure can issue any single-line message by calling the routine. For example, to issue message ABC123I, which indicates the start of a program, the command is:

WRITEWTO ABC123I My testprogram PRGTEST has started.