Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

IBM last week announced WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries Version 5.1, the latest release of its integrated development environment for creating Java- and Web-based applications for OS/400 servers. With Version 5.1, IBM will deliver new capabilities supported with the Eclipse Workbench, in addition to a new Web site designer, improved performance, more interoperability with Web services, and enhancements to the WDSc's Remote System Explorer and WebFacing Tool components, among other changes.

WebSphere Development Studio Client for iSeries, also known as WDSc, is a companion product to WebSphere Development Studio for iSeries, which contains the RPG IV, COBOL, C, and C ++ editors, compilers, and debugging facilities. Any shop that purchases WebSphere Development Studio also gets WDSc (which IBM has taken to calling Development Studio Client for iSeries, instead of WDSc, with this release). WDSc also serves as the glue that connects WebSphere Development Studio for iSeries to Eclipse, IBM's over-arching development model designed to provide an open and extensible architecture for sharing development tools among platform-specific IDEs.

With WDSc 5.1, IBM is providing support for the latest release of the Eclipse Workbench, Version 2.1, which, IBM says, will give a number of ease-of-use and performance improvements to WDSc developers. The Eclipse-related enhancements in WDSc 5.1 include a new Web Site Designer that should improve the user's capability to create, import, and manage Web sites; new support for events in the Visual Editor and the iSeries Page Designer; support for Struts 1.1 Java interfaces; and support for additional Web services tools and the latest Web Service Interoperability (WS-I) standards.

This release also brings improvements to the Remote System Explorer component of the product, a key utility within WDSc that allows developers to edit, compile, and debug standard RPG, COBOL, CL, and DDS iSeries code, and which provides the connectivity to OS/400 and IFS resources for all Eclipse plug-ins. New Remote System Explorer enhancements in WDSc 5.1 include the capability to issue a single compile command against multiple files, a new sorting view to group iSeries jobs under OS/400 subsystems, and new capabilities for filtering iSeries objects from library lists, much like PDM. The Remote Systems LPEX editor also has a new Code Assist feature.

This release of WDSc also brings enhancements to VisualAge for RPG, a component of the IDE for developing Windows-based GUIs that access iSeries apps, or for developing server-side Java code for other platforms. With WDSc 5.1, IBM has brought VisualAge RPG up to date with the latest RPG IV language definitions for OS/400 V5R2.

IBM's strategic WebFacing Tool (also a component of the WDSc suite) will also see improvements with this release. The WebFacing Tool lets you convert the traditional OS/400 green-screen interface, which requires interactive processing power, into JavaServer Pages based Web clients that use batch processing, and can therefore be run on the standard edition of OS/400. Several enhancements have been made with WDSc 5.1 that allow the WebFacing Tool to support larger volumes of data, IBM says, and the learning curve will be shortened, thanks to new samples and examples that will ship with the product.

IBM also announced a series of service offerings to get companies started with the WebFacing Tool, including a new one-day feasibility study, a three-day proof of concept, and a full conversion of the user's application using the WebFacing Tool. IBM plans to go to market with these offerings through its business partners.

WebSphere and Java application development are also seeing improvements with WDSc 5.1, including new features in the IBM Agent Controller that lets users publish, test, profile, and debug Java and WebSphere Application Server applications on supported remote servers. Also, WDSc 5.1 brings support for SQL for Java (SQLJ) and associated products, including the SQLJ Editor, SQLJ Profile, DB2 SQLJ Stored Procedures, and debugging capabilities.

Users put off by the slowness of past versions of the Windows-based WDSc should see some performance improvement with this release. IBM says it has improved the performance of WDSc by streamlining the installation procedure, and by making the software itself run faster, using less memory for builds, testing, and intensive GUI and Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) development. Similar performance improvements will be found in the advanced edition of WDSc 5.1, which IBM also announced last week.

The advanced edition of WDSc includes everything in the standard edition, and brings additional support for development of Enterprise JavaBeans and some additional screen customization and portal runtime capabilities for applications developed with the WebFacing Tool. With the advanced edition of WDSc 5.1, IBM is making some additional enhancements, including Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) runtime support for BEA WebLogic server 6.1 and 7.0. Also, this release brings a new UML Visualizer tool to help Enterprise JavaBeans developers see their code in a diagram.

Last, but not least, WDSc 5.1 supports the latest release of WebSphere Application Server for iSeries Version 5.02.

IBM says WDSc 5.1 and the advanced edition of the tool will be available to Passport Advantage customers and existing WDSc users on September 23 (for electronic shipment or download). The physical version of the product will ship October 17. For more information on WDSc 5.1, see IBM's, Software Announcement 203-193.