Debugger Webcast Recording Now Available
Posted: October 23, 2008 Filed under: Debug, Don Yantzi, RSE, webcast Leave a comment »The debugger webcast went well yesterday and the recording is available here under Webcast Recordings. I did a live demo instead of using slides (I used 3 slides). It’s always a bit tricky doing live demos for webcasts given screen resolution and network latency issues, but the recording looks pretty good.
Integrated Debugger Webcast Next Week (Oct 22)
Posted: October 17, 2008 Filed under: Debug, Don Yantzi, IBM i, RDi, webcast Leave a comment »Next Wednesday, October 22nd, I’m doing a SystemiNetwork webcast on the Integrated Debugger in WDSC and RDi titled: Debugging RPG, COBOL and CL Programs Made Easy. I’m planning to do mostly demoing with a couple of slides; provided the network connection is good. And leave lots of time for Q&A. The price is right (free; sponsored by Arcad Software) so come and join us.
NEUGC and the Debugger
Posted: April 17, 2008 Filed under: Debug, Don Yantzi, iSeries, RDi, RSE, WDSC Leave a comment »I just returned from two days of presenting at the Norteast User Groups Conference on various WDSC and RDi topics. A fun conference, with great attendees and lots of WDSC users!
A couple funny stories about the debugger while I was there. Earlier in the day on Wednesday Jon Paris was telling me about a problem he had seen at a customer site where the debugger was displaying an error about “retrieving children”. I said I had never seen or heard of the problem before. Later that afternoon I’m demoing the debugger in front of about 40 people. I set my service entry point, call my program, the debug perspective opens and up pops the exact same error. I guess I can reproduce that one now :) The good news is I was able to get some details about the error and it doesn’t appear to actually have any functional impact.
In the same demo , I’m stepping over a write to a display file and the F spec is highlighted and I’m hitting “step over” a few times until it gets to the next line, when someone in the audience tells me about the *NODEBUGIO compiler option. I never knew that even existed (and it’s always good to learn something new). What makes this even more funnier, is that about 20 minutes later (same session) another person in the audience asks if there is any way to prevent having to step over I/O multiple times in the debugger. Sure, just use *NODEBUGIO option when compiling your source :)
One last tidbit I learned this evening is that you can’t get the value of a CL variable to show in the hover box when debugging like you can with ILE RPG and COBOL. But this restriction is only if you are using the Remote Systems LPEX Editor as your debug editor (the default). If you switch to listing view in the debugger, or use the Debug Editor (preference on Run/Debug > Compiled Debug preference page) then you can get the value for CL variables to show in a hover box.
Upcoming Events
Posted: September 7, 2007 Filed under: Conference, Debug, RSE, WDSC 2 Comments »Fall and spring are usually busy times for conferences and user group meetings. This fall is proving to be no exception. Here is a list of upcoming events this fall that include content on WDSC and / or the RSE to help you plan your fall :)
- IBM webcast series on Accelerating the Modernization of System i Applications
- RPG and DB2 Summit (October 2 – 4)
- COMMON Focus (October 14 – 17)
- FASUG Application Development Day (October 23) (I’m presenting at this one)
- LISUG monthly meeting (October 24) (I’ll be presenting WDSC 7.0 What’s New and Creating Web Services with WDSC at this one)
- NESTU monthly meeting (October 25) (me again; FASUG, LISUG and NETSU are the 3 New York area user groups)
- System i Fall Technical Conference (November 5 – 9th)
- COMMON European Events (November 6 – 15th)
Updated: just got an email about SystemiNetworks’ RPG & Beyond Web conference September 18-19 and 25-26th. Looks like Susan Gantner is doing an RSE session and Aaron Bartell is doing a WDSC Goodies session.
Updated Sept 12: I built the original list from memory which apparently isn’t so good anymore! I forgot another one: iSeries DevCon2007 October 29 – 31st (thanks to Davin Wilfrid for the reminder!)
Debugger Goodies
Posted: August 29, 2007 Filed under: Debug, Don Yantzi, RSE, Tips, WDSC 1 Comment »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!
