Better support for VL object names on System i.

[andrewhiom]

on the System i, both Work with Visual LANSA Objects and Work with Lists of Objects to be Exported only operate on VL object identifiers, rather than their full names.

please consider allowing the user to work with full object names in these contexts. it would reduce much of the cognitive load when working with applications that have large numbers of objects, and result in fewer errors due to omission.

[blaynec]

This is a great suggestion.
This would help our development team out a lot.

[dianejoester]

Hi,

LANSA for i 5250 display files are somewhat constrained, so the 256 bytes for long names precludes their use in the default display for these LANSA for i lists, Work with Visual LANSA Objects and the Export displays, Add Visual LANSA components to list and Review/Delete Objects in List.
What has been implemented is the addition of Function Key 22 to show the long name for objects in a separate pop-up window for the RDMLX objects.

Something else you may not have considered is to use the ability to create/update an export list when checking in objects to an IBM i. This allows you to build an export list from your development using the Visual LANSA IDE (with long names) and then you only need to use the LANSA for i 5250 interface to tailor the export list.

Diane

[blaynec]

Diane,

You are right, I had not considered creating an export list from a "Deploy to IBMi" process. That's what I needed; that will work for us.
Thanks for your reply!

[andrewhiom]

thanks for the response, diane.

a couple of things:

1) if i'm coming to a 5250 display, with no access to an IDE, and i'm only armed with an object name, i may need to press F22 a whole lot to find the object i'm interested in. what about offering a function key to search by object name? or to switch to an alternate view? or display, say, the first 50 bytes of the object name by default, and have a function key to toggle between other details?

2) the export list facility on check-in only seems to want to create an export list. specifying an existing list does not add the object to that list, but gives me an error saying "export list failed to create on ibm i".

[andrewhiom]

2) the export list facility on check-in only seems to want to create an export list. specifying an existing list does not add the object to that list, but gives me an error saying "export list failed to create on ibm i".

apologies, seems this was only a warning message, and the object has been added to the existing list. however, the message implies that something has gone wrong.