IBM i > Developer > Websphere

The New and Improved 'RSE Quick Start Guide'

We wrote our first version of the RSE Quick Start Guide in 2006. At that time, RSE was part of V6 of the WDSC (WebSphere Development Studio Client) product. A lot has changed since then.

First, WDSC V7 came along and was a massive improvement over V6. It won over quite a few new SEU converts since it offered an installation option that allowed it to be run on a much smaller workstation. Then Rational entered the scene and took over the development of the RSE tool. The tools that had been in WDSC were repackaged and the Rational Developer product set became the new home for the RSE tool. It was Rational Developer for IBM i (aka RDi) and renamed later to Rational Developer for Power Systems (aka RDP or RD Power).

However, it was neither the new name nor the repackaging that seemed the most significant change. The thing that seemed completely counterintuitive to us was that Rational put a price tag on the new product for each developer who uses it. WDSC had come along with the compilers at no additional charge, but with the advent of V6 the RSE toolset was a separate product to be purchased. We must confess we were absolutely convinced that would be the death knell of the greatest thing to happen to programmer productivity on our platform. But we were wrong. Far from killing interest in RSE, the new packaging seemed to ignite interest in it. Go figure!

We have long ago given up trying to figure out why this happened – we’ve been too busy teaching on-site classes helping shops move from SEU to RSE to have time to worry about it! Whatever the reason, we’re delighted that interest in replacing SEU with RSE has seen a dramatic upturn since RDi and RDP came on the scene. IBM i programmers everywhere are finding out how much more productive they can be and wondering why it took them so long to give RSE a try.

Even so, many IBM i developers still have yet to make the switch. We still hear regularly via email and on various forums from developers looking for a quick way to get started using RSE instead of SEU. Of course, we feel the fastest and best way to make the switch is via a hands-on in-person class. However, sometimes that’s just not possible, especially in very small shops.

So, we’ve decided to rewrite our RSE Quick Start Guide, updating it to be more relevant for RDP. The complete guide is not yet finished, but we thought this month, we’d give our EXTRA readers a sneak preview of some of the work we’ve done so far. In this first excerpt from the guide, we’ll get RDP downloaded, installed and connected to your IBM i. Later parts of the guide will step you through some of our favorite features of the editor and its related tools such as the Outline View and compile Error Feedback.

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