The RSE Book
December 18, 2007
It’s official. Nazmin and I have a publishing agreement with MC Press to write a book on the RSE. We sent in two chapters (Getting Started and the Debugger) back in October and they liked them so they gave us the green light to go full steam ahead. We are scheduled to deliver the first manuscript to MC Press in 1Q 2008 and the book should be out around 4 months after that.
The book will be dedicated entirely to the RSE, integrated iSeries debugger and iSeries projects. The goal is to provide detailed descriptions of the features, how they were intended to be used, how this differs from how they are actually being used, customizations, how to map how things are done in SEU / PDM to the RSE, lots of tips, techniques and screenshots. And of course, some of the deep technical information that the RSE power users out there have been waiting for :)
Nazmin is currently working on the editor chapter and I’m working on the “Accessing libraries, object, and members” chapter. My chapter will basically cover the Remote Systems view (connections, managing LIBL, filters, filter pools, iSeries table view, running commands).
The problem so far has been too much writing. All the chapters are blowing their original size estimates. It seems there’s lots to write about once you dig into it.
I’m planning to do a lot more blogging here while writing the book, to share some tips, thoughts, updates on the progress, and to get feedback. In fact this has been the impetus behind quite a few of my recent postings. I would be doing some writing and want to share it immediately.
We would love any feedback, suggestions or comments you have for the book. Feel free to post a comment here or send us an email.
December 18, 2007 at 5:54 pm
OOoohhhhhh! Go guys, go!
December 19, 2007 at 9:42 am
I am at the stage of WDSC usage where I am now looking for any and every way to stay on the keyboard vs. going to the mouse. For example, using Ctrl + E to bring up a list of open editors and arrow down to the one I want to switch to. Unfortunately this only works for editors in the current pane area (i.e. if you have two panes up with groups of open editors in each, WDSC won’t allow you to select an editor from the other pane to switch to – big bummer).
My reason for posting is to express the importance of describing efficiencies that can be gained by using “short cuts” as that is what brings WDSC closer to the efficiencies SEU/PDM have.
Happy book writing!!
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
December 19, 2007 at 10:43 am
Aaron, the shortcut keys is foremost in my mind. I have been using them since my hand started getting sore with mouse clicks! The more I use them, the more I discover new ones. Our plan is to have these documented in such a way that you can carry them with you – say a bookmark. Any ideas will be appreciated.
December 19, 2007 at 10:53 am
Which version of WDSC is this book going to cover? We are thinking of trying Version 7 within the next couple of months since we had too many problems with Version 6…
December 19, 2007 at 11:10 am
Hi Terry, We will be covering Version 7.
Don
December 19, 2007 at 11:11 am
Aaron, Use Ctrl+Shift+E instead. There is a checkbox to show editors from all Windows. Once you select the checkbox it stays checked.
Don
December 19, 2007 at 4:28 pm
It’s probably not within the scope of this book, but one of the problems that’s frustrating us is that RSE doesn’t support Kerberos+EIM SSO to iSeries. A few times I’ve thought about writing an authentication plugin to leverage Kerberos, but the lack of detailed (enough) technical documentation has stopped the idea from getting very far.
December 25, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Historically there have not been many books written by IBM developers who worked on previous versions ( ADTSCS, WDT or WDSC) of this tooling. Violaine’s and Clause’s books are the two that come to mind. Performance tuning and troubleshooting have been neglected in previous publications. Hopefully you will include a chapter or two on these topics. You know who to call if you need material.
Tosh.
December 29, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Hey Tosh
Yes, we are planning to have a troubleshooting section for each chapter. I am sure you have more experience in terms of what real users of RSE stumble upon. We would love to get your input, and ensure that this section covers the problems users encounter and the workaround.