Remain Software Delivers Trio of Updates
November 11, 2020 Alex Woodie
Remain Software last week announced the delivery of new releases of three separate products, including TD/OMS, its lifecycle management tools for IBM i; Gravity, its workflow management system for multiple systems; API Studio, which helps IBM i shops develop and manage API connections to existing software.
TD/OMS, which is Remain Software’s flagship offering, is an application lifecycle management (ALM) tool for IBM i developers. The core of the offering is the Object Management System (OMS), which guides users through the process of defining applications and their associated objects, while additional modules provide more targeted functionality for reporting, impact analysis, work management, code distribution, client management (Eclipse tooling), and 4GL integration.
Last year, Remain added support for Git with TD/OMS version 12, among other new features. Now, with version 13, Remain is focusing on boosting the productivity of its customers even more.
For example, Remain is improving the compile workflow with TD/OMS V13. Now, according to the company, when the user saves an object in the editor, “it is automatically added to the build queue and the build queue is released and refreshed immediately to update the compiled contents,” Remain says. Users can control the behavior of this feature, but it is on by default.
There are other enhancements to the compile workflow. For example, pressing save in the editor will automatically save an object to the build queue. And when the user queues a physical file in the editor, all logical files will automatically be queued, too. Releasing the build queue, i.e. “pressing the running man,” no longer needs to be done manually, as it’s handled automatically now. And when the build queue is running, it automatically refreshes for the user until all results are in.
Remain has also bolstered the Git view in TD/OMS V13. Specifically, now that users can “rebase and pull on a specific branch directly from the dropdown menu,” Remain has relocated some of the update-related buttons to the toolbar. The company is also offering an “update master and branch” action, which updates the master and the branch with one click.

Remain has enhanced the build queue with TD/OMS V13.
New “transfer paths” have also been added to the definition views, which Remain says will make it easier for the user to see which transfer paths an application is using, and which “subenvironments” are on that path. Remain also added the capability to export the results of a cross-reference (Xref) query to the CSV format, and fixed an issue with its source scanner.
Several new features were added to the green screen interface (the above enhancements are specific to the GUI client). At the top of the list are enhancements to the “search word filter” in the object maintenance screen. Users can now enter values (or partial values) for fields like object name, library, directory, type, and attribute, etc.
Also, users can now use the Boolean operators “or” and “and” to filter their searches on the object maintenance screen. Remain added similar filtering capabilities to refine the records displayed in the environment maintenance screen (for working with library lists). Enhancements were also made to the solution maintenance and object maintenance screens.
Gravity and API Studio
Remain also bolstered Gravity, its project and workflow management software for IBM i, Windows, Linux, and other open systems.
Among the top features in Gravity Version 6 is the capability for a user to sign-in with his email address. Previously, a user name was required. Users can also now export the content of a filter view to an Excel file or a CSV.
The Gravity filter view has been enhanced with the capability to sort columns, and to group by item fields. Users can also export the results of a cross-reference query to CSV.

Remain greatly enhanced testing capabilities with API Studio 2.0.1.
Enhancements to the API Studio version 2.0.1, meanwhile, are designed to bolster the users’ ability to create and manage REST APIs that are compatible with the OAS spec.
At the top of the list for API Studio is testing. Remain now enables users to create test suites that run several test cases at once. A new HTTP request client also allows users to create and save HTTPS requests (even complicated ones, the company says), as well as read the responses. Users can test their whole OpenAPI method at once, or they can just pick one request to test, Remain says. They can do this from either the Request Definitions view or the API Studio.
Remain is including a “fully integrated” auto-mock server, which can handle request, callbacks, validates, path, and incoming parameters, and generate a mock response based on the definitions of the OpenAPI document.
There is are several new tabs, including one for defining a schema’s XML data format, and another for viewing or editing global tags. It’s possible to view and edit an inline schema in the attributes view, Remain says. It’s also possible for a user to generate documentation and configuration from the OAS3 document, it says.
Users can view contents of an API, such as schema, path, operation, security, or tag) from the component source viewer. Users can toggle back and forth between YAML and JSON, Remain tells us.
Delivering software during a viral pandemic isn’t easy, says Wim Jongman, CTO and co-managing partner. “The consistency and reliability in our scheduling represents our entire development team’s customer-service mindset, as well as their expertise in anticipating industry trajectories and needs and then planning, engineering and delivering solutions accordingly in a timely and predictable manner,” Jongman states in a press release.
Remain ships products four times a year. It ships full-version releases in the summer, and three quarterly milestone releases. More information can be found at the company’s website at remainsoftware.com.
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