Debugger Goodies

I was playing around with the integrated iSeries debugger in WDSC the other night and stumbled across two features I’d never noticed before and thought I’d share them here. In the Breakpoints view you can specify different ways to group breakpoints by selecting Group By > HowYouWantToGroup from the views pull down menu (that’s the upside down triangle). For example, if you are debugging a multi-tiered application and have some RPG, Java and JSP breakpoints, you could select Group By > Breakpoint Types to see them categorized by type. Here is an example:

The other feature is you can add multiple renderings to the memory view for a single field. When monitoring memory (right click on field and select Monitor Memory > Rendering) you see a list of all fields on the left side and when you select a field you see it’s memory on the right side with the rendering you selected when you added the field to the view. However you can add additional renderings by clicking on the plus sign in the top right corner of the view (there are two plus signs in the view, one adds additional fields and the other adds additional renderings for the selected field).

Background: the memory view shows the contents of memory for that field. If you select Hex then you see the raw bits. A rendering takes those raw bits and displays them as a data type; as EBCDIC for example. You can add your own renderings for Java and I believe there is a way to do this for RPG and COBOL. I’ll post that once I figure it out.

Even as a technical team lead on WDSC, I continually learning new things the tools can do. Paul Tuohy said in his keynote at this years TUG TEC conference, playing is one of the best ways to learn. I couldn’t agree more!

WDSC Pin-up

The current issue (August 2007) of the IBM Systems Magazine, i5 Business Systems edition, has a “Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts for WDSC” pin-up created by System i Developer. Unfortunately I can’t find a link to it online, but the magazine subscription is free.

I’ve memorized all the standard Windows shortcuts and Eclipse navigation shortcuts but I can never seem to remember the LPEX shortcuts so I now have it pinned up in my PWA (personal work area, aka cubicle). I’m hoping it falls within the IBM guidelines of appropriate and non-confidential materials :)

The pin-up also lists the outline view as the the System i Developer’s favorite WDSC feature. Which got me thinking; what is my favorite WDSC feature? Outline view, application diagram (I’m biased on this one), and extensibility are definitely runner-ups. But my favorite feature is without a doubt service entry points!

So, what’s your favorite?

Updated  09/20: A PDF of the pin-up is available on the System i Developers website here.