If you develop or port AIX applications, then you need to read this article. IBM has created a development environment, called IBM Rational Developer for Power Systems, that makes your day-to-day application development faster, better, and more fun.

IBM Rational Developer for Power Systems is part of a larger set of products, including IBM Rational Team Concert (which provides a collaborative development environment across your entire team), IBM Rational Application Developer (which provides developer tooling for J2EE applications), and IBM Rational Developer for System z (which provides developer tooling for applications targeted to System z).  Stand-alone, these products all work, but when installed together, they do much more, providing a complete suite of  integrated language-centric tools for applications written in COBOL, C/C++, Java, or a combination thereof.

Rational Developer for Power Systems on AIX


IBM's philosophy on tooling is to fit into your current business, and avoid dramatic changes to your development process. As such, our development tools in Rational Developer for Power Systems are designed to work with the file systems, directories, and code control systems that you use today. You work with your existing build scripts. You are not forced to change things to use our tools. Of course, if you have a new application you are developing we make this process easy by enabling you to associate it with existing  makefiles, source code, executables and related files.

Providing general-purpose access to the server is critical for an enterprise development environment to be effective. Rational Developer for Power Systems provides full access to file systems, processes, and shells from either a Windows or Linux desktop client, which is especially convenient for developers who need to create and maintain applications on more than one server.

We provide the tools you expect: editors, remote build tools, debuggers. However, we also  provide a fit and finish that goes well beyond your expectations. The editors are fully language sensitive, and are fully aware of the compilers they work with, providing tightly integrated compile/edit capabilities. The debugger provides full support for remote debug not only of applications being developed, but also for debugging core files or attaching to processes that are already active. Finally, the tools are all designed to work with source code control systems – whether you use IBM Rational Team Concert, or open source alternatives such as CVS and SVN.

Remote Systems Explorer

 
At the heart of Rational Developer for Power Systems is the Remote Systems Explorer component which, provides access to AIX servers for both the developer to use directly as well as for other tools, like the editors, builders, and debuggers, to use when they need to access the server. For a developer, it's a great way to take a look around on the system at the files and processes, launch some secure shells on the server, as well to run some quick commands. 

Context Sensitive Editor

 
The context sensitive editor provides much more than just basic source code entry. C, C++, COBOL, makefile, and Java editors are just some of the editors provided in the product. Each has a full understanding of the language, enabling developers to fly through their code by clicking on functions, methods or subroutines (depending on your language), to auto-complete expressions, as well as to perform a myriad of other useful features, like code formatting (which is fully configurable to your company's coding guidelines). We use the Remote Systems Explorer for access to your source on the server. You can either edit directly from the server, if your company guidelines prevent code from being downloaded, or you can work in 'airplane mode', with local source, using intelligent 'push' technology to upload your source.

Since Rational Developer for Power Systems is built upon the Eclipse open, extensible framework, you also have a wealth of other editors, and tools, that you can install thereby extending and customizing the IDE provided by Rational Developer for Power Systems.

Remote Build
 

Develop and build your applications inside the development environment, leverage the Remote Systems Explorer to upload and run the build scripts and makefiles on the server, interpret the output from the AIX xlc compiler and point and click on any compilation error to open the source code in the editor and make the necessary changes.

Remote Debug

 
Unfortunately, an application typically doesn't run properly the first time. The remote debugger is one of the crown jewels of  Rational Developer for Power Systems, enabling enterprise-scale multi-threaded, multi-process application debug on remote servers from your Windows or Linux client. The debugger provides standard features like single-step, step-return, and the ability to view and change variables. Additionally, we provide features you won't see in other offerings, like the ability to transfer your current debug solution to another person on your team, using Rational Team Concert. You can also 'park' your debug session, go to lunch, get a coffee, find out what the mysterious variable x is supposed to do, or anything else that springs to mind, then 'resume' your session later on.

Want to Learn More
One of the quickest ways to learn more about Rational Developer for Power Systems is to watch some short C/C++ and COBOL videos.

To read more about Rational Developer for Power Systems, see http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/products/rdp/.

All in All
Rational Developer for Power Systems lets you develop your applications efficiently, with easy access to all of the AIX servers you target. The language-centric tools in Rational Developer for Power Systems are designed to help you get your job done, your way, without forcing you to change your existing processes. Rational Developer for Power Systems is built on the Eclipse framework, which gives you access to hundreds of additional plugins for every aspect of your day-to-day application development. It's faster, better, and more fun.