RDz z/OS Integration Tools

As a modern IDE, RDz is often purchased as a replacement for TSO/ISPF – even though IBM is careful not to oversell expectations. While RDz provides considerable uplift to the z/OS programmer’s maintenance and production support tasks there will always be some measure of ISPF green screen development applications/tools that RDz will not support.

These include: CLISTs and REXX Execs, custom ISPF Dialog Manager applications developed in-house, and 3rd Party purchased ISPF applications. And during any RDz Rollout you’ll be forced to make some decisions about how to access these green screen dev-apps from RDz. The most common approach to integrating these green-screen apps is through HATS/RCP.Host Access Transformation Services or HATS for short, is an IBM/Rational packaged product – that comes free-of-charge, with RDz and that offers a seamless interface from RDz/Eclipse to 3270-based ISPF Dialogs executing in the TSO/CICS/IMS environments. The RCP (Rich Client Plugin) functionality is available through HATS and it provides a graphical development experience that is aligned with the RDz/eclipse GUI framework, including:

Context Menus – often driven from Menu Manager actions) can be used to launch HATS applications

HATS application “green screen scraping” – dynamically accessing TSO/ISPF and integrated into RDz and rendering 3270 output in Eclipse View/Perspective GUI format

Simplified integration features – including single sign on capabilities

HATS/RCP applications make use of 3270 streams in the background. The HATS development package (called the HATS Toolkit) allows you to customize the look-and-feel, as well as the behavior of 3270 green screen applications used as RDz/zOS integration.

With each purchase of the RDz Integration Tools you will receive a HATS Project with several functions, plus a Readme file that provides instructions on how to use. Note that you will receive 24 hours of Royal Cyber expert consulting to complete the integration of HATS/RCP projects with RDz.

We have made a free HATS project available with the implementation of the following ‘green screen’ features:

  • XDC
  • SDSF
  • RACF

With minimum customization to this HATS project, you can use these features directly within RDz. A Royal Cyber representative will assist you to customize this project according to your environment.