Hi Guys,
I've been following this thread with continued interest. In our shop we have moved from WDSCi 7.0 to RDi 7.5. RDi 7.5 is the preferred IDE where we work, and we are moving all of our developers over.
We are on V5R4 and will move to 6.1, but not quite yet.
For us SEU is simply not an option for the future. We are committed to the eclipse-based IDE and RDi 7.5 is the latest and greatest.
Many of our developers work with Java/JSP/XML/JavaScript/HTML/etc and they work in eclipse. They use eclipse 3.4 (ganymede) for all that work. In there they have MyLyn, subclipse, JIRA, and many other plugins. Most can't work on eclipse versions older than 3.3. some are new to 3.4.
The look and feel of eclipse 3.4 is MUCH better than earlier eclipse versions. The way full-screen mode works (with the ability to have all your hidden views as icons at the edges, and the way they slide in and out when needed), the performance enhancements, and the workbench stability fixes are worth the migration alone.
We allowed our developers to move from eclipse 3.3 to 3.4 for all their non-native IBM i work to take advantage of those benefits. Why would we NOT move from WDSCi (eclipse 3.2) to RDi 7.5 (eclipse 3.4) for our native IBM i work (ILE RPG, CL, etc)? Along with the performance benefits provided by the eclipse upgrade are heaps of performance gains provided by the work done by IBM/Rational.
Frankly, it costs us in productivity to NOT upgrade. RDi is MUCH MUCH faster than WDSCi. It is in another league. We can now actually benefit from the outline view - in some cases when we click the refresh button it refreshes sub-second. :-) With the now usable outline view comes a functioning and well-behaved content assist. We are gaining major benefits from these tools.
Regarding the searching functionality, Joe is right on the money - the Search -> IBM i tool is unbelievably easy and fast to use. I use it ALL THE TIME. Really, it is brilliantly fast. I would never, ever, ever use the find string option (right-clicking multiple members via a member filter) when I have that tool available.
On another note - we don't bother using object or member filters in the RSE view to work with our code. In fact we don't really use the RSE view much at all to find or work with members: For those of you who prefer the PDM view of the world (and there are a lot in our shop) then just use the 'Object Table' view. It is Turbo PDM! It provides all of the familiar 'work with' options, but it remembers your most recently used filters. This allows you to select a recently used PDM member or object list from a drop-down list. The member list builds sub-second - I'm sure it is actually faster than the PDM subfile build for smalll to medium lists! You can also navigate from a member filter up to the object filter and back again - similar to doing a WRKMBRPDM and while in it popping up to the parent WRKOBJPDM - just a click away - and back down again (even going from QRPGLESRC uo to the object list and then clicking down into QDDSSRC). Right click a list entry and along with the usual RDi member options is a PDM Options list (including 2=Edit, 3=Copy, 7=Rename, 25=Search, 55=Merge, etc...). So it is PDM but much more than PDM. You can also pop the Object Table view up while working on your source in full-screen. No need to go out of your source to select another member in your list to open.
The debugger seems to perform better too. We had some debugger issues when on WDSCi 7.0 (current user profile issues and major slowdown when several breakpoints set in multiple members) but have not reported anything major yet with RDi.
I could go on... ;-)
Really, why would you NOT move to RDi 7.5? We made the move and don't regret it for a single second. :-)
Of course, only my opinion (and that of all of the managers, senior managers, and director of our IT department).
Cheers
Larry Ducie
(A very happy RDi 7.5 user)
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