Welcome
Developing
Developing EGL applications
Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) is a programming language that you can use to focus on business problems instead of software technologies. Within the Rational® development environment, you can use EGL wizards and other tools to write complex applications with minimal effort.
EGL Generation Guide
The EGL Generation Guide covers the process of converting EGL code to Java™ or COBOL source code, including the processes and the files involved. This section is intended for a developer who will generate or deploy EGL applications.
Overview of Java™ generation
Overview of Java™ output
Program properties file

Overview
Getting started
Installing
Upgrading and migrating
EGL Code Accelerator for IBD
Developing
- Model driven development of EGL code
- Generating source code from UML models
  You can use transformations to create source code from a UML model. First you must create a transformation parameters file and then apply those parameters to a model.
- Generating the EGL Dependency Graph from EGL projects
- Generating Source Code from OpenAPI Documents
- Developing EGL applications
  Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) is a programming language that you can use to focus on business problems instead of software technologies. Within the Rational® development environment, you can use EGL wizards and other tools to write complex applications with minimal effort.
  - How to use this documentation
  - Additional information about EGL
    The most recent EGL documentation is in the IBM Business Developer documentation.
  - EGL Programmer's Guide
    The EGL Programmer's Guide covers using EGL within the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE), as well as some of the common programming tasks that EGL developers perform.
  - EGL Generation Guide
    The EGL Generation Guide covers the process of converting EGL code to Java™ or COBOL source code, including the processes and the files involved. This section is intended for a developer who will generate or deploy EGL applications.
    - Introduction to EGL generation and deployment
      After you write and test EGL source code, you generate Java™, JavaScript™, or COBOL code for a target platform.
    - Generation using the Eclipse workbench
    - Generation using the EGL software development kit (SDK)
    - Generating from the workbench batch interface
      The workbench batch interface is a feature that lets you generate and deploy EGL output from a batch environment that can access the workbench.
    - Generating with an Ant script
      You might create an Ant script that cleans a workspace and causes an automatic build and generation. To help you save processing time, the product provides a Java™ VM argument to include in the Ant script.
    - Creating headless EGL build
      You can have multiple Ant tasks for a headless build. With headless builds, EGL builds can be managed more efficiently and EGL can support Agile programming better.
    - Ant tasks for headless build
      Ant tasks are required to create an Ant script that is to be used in a headless EGL build. Besides the Ant tasks defined by Eclipse, Rational® Application Developer, and the ant-contrib library, IBM Business Developer also provide several Ant tasks for your use.
    - EGL Generation Results view
    - Writing Java™ code to capture details of code generation
      You can now write Java™ code to produce a report or otherwise respond to events at generation time.
    - Creating and maintaining a build file
    - Build Descriptor part
      A build file (.eglbld extension) can contain multiple Build Descriptor parts. Each Build Descriptor part controls the generation process for a particular set of circumstances.
    - Overview of build descriptor options
    - Overview of linkage options part
    - Resource associations part
    - Overview of .ir files
    - Overview of the EGL deployment descriptor editor
      The EGL deployment descriptor editor updates the EGL deployment descriptor file. For a description of how that XML file is used, see Introduction to EGL generation and deployment. For a description of how to create such a file, see Creating an EGL deployment descriptor.
    - VSAM support
    - Data conversion
    - Generation output
      This topic outlines the output generated by EGL, including the control files that affect preparation or external deployment.
    - Name aliasing
    - Build plan
    - Build scripts
    - Build server
    - Deploying EGL projects on CICS® Liberty Profile
      You can deploy EGL web projects on a CICS® Liberty profile.
    - Generating and deploying a web service on CICS®
      This topic describes how to generate and deploy a web service on z/OS® CICS®. Aside from setting up the relevant EGL build parts, you must set the following CICS definitions: TRANSACTION, TCPIPSERVICE, and PIPELINE.
    - Deploying a web service requester to CICS®
      You can generate and deploy a logic part that runs on z/OS® CICS® and accesses a web service.
    - Special considerations for generating EGL or SOAP services for z/OS® CICS®
    - Special considerations for accessing SOAP services from IBM® i COBOL programs
      Special considerations apply to accessing SOAP services from EGL-generated COBOL programs on IBM® i. For an overview of the runtime architecture, see Overview of EGL support for SOA.
    - Special considerations for generating EGL or REST services for z/OS® CICS®
    - Special considerations for deploying COBOL SOAP services on IBM® i
      Deploying COBOL SOAP services on IBM® i requires that you generate outputs for both Java™ and COBOL. For an overview of the generated output and the runtime architecture, see Overview of EGL support for SOA.
    - Generating web transactions
      Use EGL web transactions to migrate VisualAge® Generator web transactions to EGL.
    - Overview of Java™ generation
    - Build descriptor options used with JavaScript™
      This topic lists the build descriptor options used with JavaScript™, which is the generated language for EGL Rich UI.
    - Overview of COBOL generation
    - Build descriptor options
    - Linkage options part
  - EGL Language Reference
    The EGL Language Reference covers the fundamental use of the language, including its concepts, syntax, and keywords. This volume is intended for a developer writing EGL applications with some experience in procedural programming.
  - Rational® COBOL Runtime Guide for zSeries®
    This manual provides information about customizing and administering the IBM® Rational® COBOL Runtime.
  - IBM Business Developer EGL Server Guide for IBM® i
    This manual provides information about customizing and administering EGL Server for IBM® i on the host.
  - Generation for VSE Feature Reference
    This reference manual provides z/VSE-specific information about developing and generating EGL programs in the VSE environment.
- Source code analysis with code review
  With code review, you can create configurations of coding rules for EGL source code. You can then run the configurations to check the source code for consistency with the rules.
- Responsive Design Support in IBD
  What is Responsive Design? Responsive design is an approach for creation of web pages that automatically scales its content and elements to match the screen size on which it is viewed. So, instead of designing multiple websites for different devices with variable screen sizes, we can design just one website that scales up or down automatically, to match the device it’s being viewed on.
- Containerizing an EGL RUI Application
Samples
Troubleshooting and support
EGL runtime error messages
Reference
Glossary
Using the help
Notices for IBM Business Developer documentation

Program properties file

In addition to the properties associated with EGL parts, there are a number of Java™ runtime properties that control access to databases, files, and other resources. To help distinguish them from EGL properties, and to emphasize the fact that they are not properties under J2EE, this documentation may refer to these Java™ runtime properties as settings.

When you generate Java™ code, and you have the genProperties build descriptor option set to GLOBAL or PROGRAM, the settings in various build descriptor options are stored as Java™ runtime properties, and are written to one of three locations:

a program properties file;
the J2EE deployment descriptor for the project; or
a J2EE environment file.

In general, if the generation mode is main part and its associates and if one of the following is true:

the main part is a VGWebTransaction, or
the j2ee build descriptor option is set to YES;

and if the genProperties build descriptor option is set to GLOBAL or PROGRAM, then the values of some build descriptor options that are used at Java™ run time get stored in a file.

If you are generating in a non-J2EE environment, EGL stores these settings in a program properties file. This is one of three different possible files, which are searched in the following order:

user.properties: EGL does not create this file; you must create it yourself in your home directory (for example, C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator).
programName.properties: EGL creates this file in the appropriate package in the Java™ Resources directory (for example, src/com/companyb/customerpackage) if the genProperties build descriptor option is set to PROGRAM.
rununit.properties: EGL creates this file in the Java™ Resources directory if the genProperties build descriptor option is set to GLOBAL.

All three are plain text files with entries in the form:

setting = value

This example shows what part of a properties file might look like:

# This file contains properties for generated 
# Java programs that are being debugged in a 
# non-J2EE Java project

vgj.nls.code = ENU
vgj.datemask.gregorian.long.ENU = MM/dd/yyyy