IBM Explorer for z/OS 3.3.2 is now available.  In addition to several fixes there are enhancements that will streamline your mainframe development experience.

Usability Improvements for Working with Jobs

Looking at large job spools in an IDE (integrated development environment) can be arduous for a number reasons.   Downloading a large job spool, such as a SYSLOG, into an editor can take a long time and, when it is really massive, the UI can become unstable and unresponsive.  With many thousands of records, job spools can be cumbersome to navigate.  Often times, you don't want to see all the records - you just want to focus on a select range.  Maybe you just care about the most recent records or maybe you want to zero-in on records at a particular time of day.

In past releases, when you attempted to open a large job spool, you would be prompted to either open the entire spool or the first N records (or the last N records depending on your preferences).  This prompt would let you focus on the beginning (or end) but wouldn't let you zoom into an arbitrary range of the spool.  You could get around that by selecting a spool file and using the "Open from line..." context menu action and that would prompt you to type in a starting record and the number of records to retrieve from that point.

With our new release, selecting a job spool range is much easier and more flexible.  Now you can just scroll to select the lower and upper bounds of the records you want to see.

Another usability improvement for jobs is the ability to bulk-select jobs for operations requiring confirmation.  When you attempt to cancel, purge, release or hold a job you don't own, you have to provide confirmation before proceeding with the operation.  In previous releases, if you did this with multiple jobs, you would get multiple prompts for this, which can be annoying.  With the new release, you can now provide this confirmation from a single prompt.

VSAM Related Updates

IBM Explorer for z/OS provides limited support for VSAMs and, in this release, there are a couple small improvements.   Now, when you select a VSAM in the Remote Systems view, the Properties view will include the alternate index and alternate index path if they are defined.  In previous releases, double-clicking on a VSAM would have no effect but now you get a message indicating that action is not supported.   If you're looking more comprehensive VSAM support, it's best to include IBM File Manager for z/OS in your Aqua installation. 

Password Related Improvements

There are a couple improvements related to passwords.  Previous versions of IBM Explorer for z/OS did not provide an explicit action to change your mainframe password.  You would, however, get that with IBM Developer for z/OS (IDz) or if your password already expired.  Now the Change Password action has been moved into IBM Explorer for z/OS so that it's available, even if you don't have IDz installed.  In addition, the product now provides a warning in the status bar (lower left corner) after you connect when your password is close to expiration. 

We hope you like these enhancements and look forward to your feedback.