Developing Application Master (AM) and Cobol programs for ICL`s VME mainframe environment has traditionally condemned programmers to an outdated green screen approach - but not any more!
Easirun (www.easirun.co.za) has announced the availability in South Africa of a sophisticated graphical development environment for ICL VME sites that use AM, Cobol and IDMSX. The software is supplied by UK-based Xitec Software, a leading developer of ICL VME tools, represented in South Africa by Easirun.
"With Xitec Developer, all programmers can use a Window based graphical IDE for writing, modifying and testing their mainframe programs", says Charles Swindells, mainframe products manager for Easirun. "AM programmers can use a graphical tool that gives them a schematic view of their AM programs, whilst Cobol developers get sophisticated GUI based editing, compiling and testing tools, including animation. This results in a far quicker development process, with greatly improved quality".
Xitec products run on standard Windows workstations and emulate the complete ICL VME environment. Mainframe dictionaries are copied down to the workstations where they are maintained using a tree structured graphical view of the dictionary, which is far easier to maintain than on the mainframe. The IDMSX database is emulated using a standard relational database such as Oracle, whist Microfocus NetExpress handles the Cobol development and program compilation tasks.
"The Xitec development environment allows programmers to develop programs in the same way as their counterparts in the PC world", says Swindells, "and addresses one of the main problems facing mainframe sites - that of staff retention. With Xitec software, programmers are much more productive and far happier with their development environment and are much less likely to leave the VME site. It is also unnecessary for them to learn new commands, since the Xitec emulation is 100% compatible with the mainframe and all the programmers have to learn are the new IDE tools".
Share