The Base Template Editor offers various options for creating new templates and editing existing templates for use with the File Manager® Base editor. Templates improve the functionality of the File Manager® editor by providing a particular interpretation of records stored in a resource. The Template Editor allows you to specify what that interpretation is by providing the tools necessary to easily create and modify templates. Having this functionality gives you additional control over the way you interact with your data. The Template Editor provides a similar level of editing functionality as is available in File Manager. For more information about the IBM File Manager ISPF template editor, see the IBM File Manager® for z/OS® User's Guide and Reference.
The Template Editor in File Manager® for Eclipse plug-in allows you to work with:
The template editor consists of three tabs which are described below.
The layout tab presents information about different layouts available in the currently edited template. Using this tab, you can specify various information about the template as follows:
Adding a new in Dynamic Template layout |
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When your copybook or template contains multiple record types, each type is initially distinguished by the record length. Provided that each type has a unique record length, you can select and display the various types. However, if two or more of the record types have the same length, you need to supply Record Identification Criteria. This usually takes the form of a field that contains a value unique to each record of the same type. For example if a layout applies when the 2nd field has a character value of '01', then your Identification Criteria might be: #2 = '01'. You can specify hexadecimal strings in your criteria. A hexadecimal string must be in the form 'hhhhhh'x, where the value enclosed in quotes must be an even number of characters and contain valid hexadecimal characters, e.g. #2 = 'F0F1'X.
After specifying the Record Identification Criteria for each record type, you can specify Selection Criteria to limit which records from that type you want to work with. Selection Criteria can also use hexadecimal strings in the form 'hhhhhh'x.
Layout Tab |
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This dialog helps you to construct criteria which can be used as Identification, Selection, or Related Identification Criteria.
By-Field Criteria Editor |
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This dialog allows you to write a criteria expression yourself. The dialog presents field information about the currently selected layout to assist you in writing the criteria expression.
You can double-click on a field in the table to insert the corresponding field number in the expression. You can also press Ctrl + Space to activate the content assist which gives you a list of fields with descriptions.
NOTE: Since the free-format criteria is more expressive than the by-field expression, free-format criteria and by-field criteria are not interchangeable. However, in both cases, you can specify hexadecimal strings in the form 'hhhhhh'x, where the value enclosed in quotes must be an even number of characters and contain valid hexadecimal characters, e.g. 'F0F1'X.
Criteria Editor (free-format) |
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The copybooks tab presents information about the copybooks which were used to create the template. This tab also allows you to modify the copybooks included in the template.
You can specify up to 12 copybook libraries for a template. When re-building the template, a specified set of copybook members are searched in the copybook libraries. The first member matched in a library is used when re-building the template.
When you select the Rebuild button, the editor rebuilds the template using the specified copybooks and the compiler options in the preference page (only if compiler options were specified for the currently connected host. Otherwise the default options will be used).
Copybooks Tab |
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The information tab presents some basic information about the template such as the creation and modification dates. In addition, you can specify a description of the template.
Information Tab |
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