IBM Rational Development Studio for i provides the compilers and the text-based (5250) application development tools for IBM i. Before Version 7.1, the product was known as IBM WebSphere Development Studio. The product is structured as three priced features that are licensed per user and per system:

• IBM i Integrated Language Environment (ILE) Compilers, the current generation of compilers for RPG, COBOL, and C/C++ that are based on modern, cross-language technology

• Heritage Compilers

• Application Development ToolSet (ADTS), the text-based application development tools

Ongoing maintenance and support costs for Rational Development Studio for i are included in the IBM i system Software Maintenance Agreement (SWMA).

Version 7.2 delivers significant enhancements to the IBM i ILE compilers. A partial list includes:

ILE RPG

• Support for free-form Control, File, Definition, and Procedure statements

• Several enhancements related to Coded Character Set Identifiers (CCSIDs)

• Increased precision for timestamp data

• Ability to control the length of the value returned by %SUBDT

• New XML-INTO options to support XML namespaces

• An optimization option to improve the performance of date, time, and timestamp operations by skipping the validation step

• Program Call Markup Language (PCML) support for date, time, timestamp, and 8-byte unsigned integers

ILE COBOL

• Increased precision for timestamp data

• XML PARSE support for XML files greater than 16MB in size

• Improved support for PCML generation of OCCURS DEPENDING ON items and filler items

• Several enhancements for National data (Unicode)

• Options to help improve the accuracy of some numeric operations

• New PROCESS options NOCHGFLTRND and ALWCHGFLTRND to specify how COBOL will use the floating-point rounding mode specified by the SETCA machine interface (MI) instruction

The Heritage compilers are stabilized as of Version 5 Release 4. It is recommended that their use be discontinued and ILE compilers be adopted.

ADTS is stabilized as of Version 6.1. In particular, ADTS does not support new language capabilities that were introduced in the ILE Compilers as of Version 6.1. It is recommended that use of ADTS be discontinued and that Rational Developer for i, a modern graphical Integrated Development Environment (IDE), be adopted.

Rational Application Management Toolset for i (AMTS) is a subset of ADTS that is suitable for use by system administrators, application testers, release engineers, and other technical users who are not actual application developers. For example, it provides tools for working with library file system objects and for creating and maintaining Command Language (CL) programs. It is licensed per system for unlimited use on that system. Version 7.2 is delivered as continuance of support, as the capabilities of ADTS. Therefore the capabilities of AMTS are stabilized as of Version 6.1. Ongoing maintenance and support costs for Application Management Toolset for i are included in the IBM i system Software Maintenance Agreement (SWMA).

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