RE: What's the scoop on the current state of WDSCi affairswithin IBM?

One more thing, in addition to what Kelly and Mark have already said (to use
a mix of traditional tools and WDSC), is to try using the iSeries Projects
perspective. This is intended to be used for off-line source development,
but I find it addition to that it serves as a great source
repository/versioning system where you can restore source if necessary. I'll
explain a little more.

You can select your source members (from the AS/400) within the member
filters you've setup. Right click and select either "make available offline"
or "add to iSeries Projects". If you don't have the iSeries Projects
perspective already open, selecting one of those actions will open it for
you automatically. Then it will create your first "project". At this point
you'll want to open and edit your source in the iSeries Projects
perspective. When I have the member open I usually don't save the changes
until I'm completely done, because when you save the source from this
perspective it will start to save versions of that particular member you're
working within.

Now you can select the member you just changed in the iSeries Projects
perspective, right click and select "remote actions" then select "push
selected only". This will upload that source member to the AS/400 replacing
that member in that source file. I don't recommend using the other options
in that right-click context menu, such as "push changes" which will push all
members of that project over and most likely try to compile them for you.
Although I've gotten the other options to work, I just prefer to compile the
source myself, usually from green screen.

I don't know what is causing your source to be lost. Whether it has
something to do with the JVM or the connection to the AS/400. If it is a JVM
problem, you may be screwed anyway :( Another neat option from the iSeries
Projects perspective is the ability to restore from local history (remember
each time you save changes in that member it will save a new version of it,
that's why I wait till all my changes are made). To do this, select the
member from your iSeries perspective. Right click and select "replace with",
then select either "local history" (which will pop-up a window of the
versions you've saved) or select "previous from local history". Check out
the "compare with" options from this menu also. They are awesome! You can
compare version of the source and merge them together all kinds of ways. Say
you have a project which represents production and one that represents test.
You can select the production version of the source member, hold CTRL down
and select the test version of the same source member, then right-click
select "compare with" then select "each other". Check out the "Window" >
"Preferences" > "Workbench" > "Local History" configurations to modify how
the versioning will work.

WDSC is a great tool. I've been using it for over a year now, and I'm still
using 5.0.1. It certainly does have it's flaws and a whole lot of overhead
processing. I too have lost source, although it has only happened very
rarely. The developers on this forum have been extremely helpful, and I've
learned a lot of things from them that I probably would've never figured out
on my own. I really hope IBM continues to improve upon this product. It
certainly looks like they are in my opinion.

So if your listening IBM, one of my biggest hitches is that the "compare
with" action doesn't finish if there are, quoting the error message here,
"too many differences". I have turned the "ignore white space" option off
also and that didn't help either. Is this any better in 5.1?

Thanks all...

-----Original Message-----
From: wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Dan Bale
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 11:12 AM
To: WDSCI-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [WDSCI-L] What's the scoop on the current state of WDSCi
affairswithin IBM?

Don't really want to stir up a hornet's nest here, but...

I understand that you'll always hear more about the negative things going on
with a product than positive things, but I can't help but get past this
image that WDSCi is far from being ready for prime time based on the
problems described in this list.

Some of the problems reported here that stick in my brain are lost source
members after hours of modification (sends shivers down my spine; I think
they'd have to call paramedics if that happened to me), frequent WDSCi
crashes (requiring reboots), performance being as slow as molasses on a cold
Minnesota day in February (despite some users reporting some really souped
up PCs).  These issues do nothing to build confidence in a product.

I know the IBM team participates on this list, and for that I am extremely
grateful.  I would be interested in knowing if there's been any talk of a
redesign from scratch effort or something else drastic to address these
glaring problems.  Kinda like how PC Support was replaced by a completely
rewritten Client Access years ago.  It is also my understanding that WDSCi
was originally developed in Rochester and now that has been transferred to
Toronto (do I understand that correctly?), and maybe we are experiencing the
reasons for that move.

I installed WDSCi 5.0, which is an older version, but is the latest version
I can find around here.  Our iSeries is on V5R2, so don't know if a newer
WDSCi should have been included in that.  Since I have only a PC with 128MB
of memory and 700MHz Pentium, I thought I might at least try CODE400, but
I'm not happy with some of the behaviors (i.e., member line numbers
resequenced at .01 increments, source statement change dates set to zero).

I haven't been able to get the "Complete the installation of CODE and
VisualAge RPG" shortcut to go away, even though I've run it twice now, so I
am unsure as to whether I can use either with confidence.

Clicking on the "Development Studio Client for iSeries" shortcut
("C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere Studio\wdsc.exe" -feature
com.ibm.wdsclient) brings up an Eclipse dialog box that starts with:
  JVM terminated. Exit code=1
followed by 12 lines of ... parameters or somesuch.  Of course, there's no
way to copy/paste this information.  Perhaps someone with Java experience
would understand what is being communicated here, but that's not me, nor
anyone else in my company.

db

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