ABSTRACTS

REXX SYMPOSIUM 2004

Title:	NetRexx Tutorial
Speaker:	Thomas Schneider
Abstract:	This session is a NetRexx tutorial presented by Thomas Schneider.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	Tracking Gas Balloons with Rexx
Speaker:	Christian Michel
Abstract:	The most famous gas balloon race The Coupe Aeronautique Gordon Bennett has used satellite tracking equipment for the last two years to follow the balloons during their long distance flights which can last up to 3 days. The position information was used both in the competition command center as well as in the public web pages. The position information and some automatically generated maps were provided by the satellite service provider and REXX was chosen as the automation mechanism to move the available information into the different publication channels. This presentation gives you an overview how the data was collected and fed into the MySQL/PHP based web presentation using a couple of REXX scripts running on an old 166 MHz laptop. The programs used a combination of different function packages and code snippets that were already presented in previous REXX symposiums and therefore could be implemented in a very short timeframe. A short video presentation of the race (5 min) is also available to give you an insight into this sport.
Papers:	PDF of slides (5mb)

Title:	Object Rexx and Windows Automation Interfaces
Speaker:	Rony Flatscher
Abstract:	In the Windows world the scripting respectively remote controlling of Windows and Windows applications is usually realized via the COM-based OLE/ActiveX-Automation Interfaces. Unfortunately, many times the documentation of the available interfaces is either not available or in a form which does not serve very well as reference for Object Rexx programmers. Usually, the available OLE/ActiveX-interfaces can be interrogated at runtime and therefore it becomes possible to detect the interfaces (functions/methods with their signatures and return values as well as interceptable events). This talk describes the architecture of a set of Object Rexx programs for interrogating and rendering the documented interfaces into HTML employing CSS and embedding Object Rexx code. For non-Object Rexx programmers a Windows Script Component (WSC) is created, which allows e.g. C++, Visual Basic (Script) programmers to employ this particular functionality, carried out in Object Rexx. Among other things it will be demonstrated, how the Internet Explorer is used as a GUI for choosing OLE/ActiveX-automation classes derived from the Windows registry, as well JScript and VBScript programs which invoke the Object Rexx routines via WSC supplying OLE/ActiveX objects to be analyzed.
Papers:	PDF of slides Sample programs

Title:	ANSI Regina and other cool features
Speakers:	Florian Große-Coosmann and Mark Hessling
Abstract:	In April 2003, the principal maintainers of Regina, and co-presenters, made the bold statement that Regina was now ANSI compliant. This talk will address (if you'll excuse the pun) those features of ANSI Rexx that are not defined in TRL2 that are now available in Regina. Some of the ANSI features covered will be extensions to ADDRESS, extended error messages, reserved symbols like .RC, ..RS etc. In the other cool features category, additions of ARexx builtins, the RexxCallBack() API, locale support, external queues, and the future direction of Regina will be covered.
Papers:	PDF of slides Slides and sample programs

Title:	What's Wrong With Rexx
Speaker:	Walter Pachl
Abstract:	Out of 15+ years of experience with Rexx, a list of pitfalls and surprises will be presented. Some of them you will already have encountered yourself. Others will be new even to experienced Rexx-users. Methods for testing a Rexx implementation (IBM's Rexx-compiler) will be recalled (some 15 years after applying them), and finally we will offer some hints derived from using Rexx after having retired from IBM and VM in a banking environment and on my private PCs.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	Welcome To IBM Labs
Speaker:	Manfred Schweizer
Abstract:	Manfred provides an introduction to the IBM Laboratory at Böblingen.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	25 Years of Rexx - A Personal View
Speaker:	Mike Cowlishaw
Abstract:	Mike answers a laundry list of "who, what, when, where, and why" questions about the birth and early days of Rexx.
Papers:	PDF of slides (2.5mb)

Title:	Camouflaging Java as Object Rexx
Speaker:	Rony Flatscher
Abstract:	The Java runtime environment (JRE) is available for practical every operating system in the world and installed on most computers. The functionality of the Java classes that build the JRE has been constantly updated to reflect the advances in the software technology thereby making bleeding edge software concepts available to Java programmers. For that reason the JRE has been an attractive target for making its functionality available to Rexx programs in the form of external Rexx functions, notably with the BSF4Rexx (Bean Scripting Framework for Rexx) technology introduced at past International Rexx Symposiae. BSF4Rexx supplies a procedural interface to Java, such that Rexx programs need to simply use CALL-statements or function-calls to bridge into Java. As Object Rexx is object-oriented an object-oriented interface to Java may be desirable as this may reduce the complexity to refer to Java . This talk introduces and discusses the architecture and the implementation of Object Rexx wrapper classes that hide the procedural interfaces from Object Rexx programmers by embedding the procedural interfaces of BSF4Rexx in Object Rexx methods, allowing e.g. the invocation of Java methods transparently via Object Rexx messages. Among other things it will be demonstrated, how Java objects are created and sent messages to interactively via a keyboard using the Rexx "rexxtry.rex" program in a command line interface.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	Business Update on Rexx in IBM
Speaker:	Virgil Hein
Abstract:	The latest business updates / business investments in the future of REXX, including charts covering Business Value, Infrastructure Value, and Component Value on the IBM REXX products.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	The On-Demand culture - 40 Years Mainframe and Linux
Speaker:	Karl-Heinz Strassemeyer
Abstract:	The father of Linux on the Mainframe explains the nature of on-demand computing, and the future of Linux at IBM.
Papers:	PDF of slides (2.5mb)

Title:	Object Rexx GTK+ Project
Speaker:	David Ashley
Abstract:	The Object REXX GTK+ Project is an Open Source project that provides a dialog interface from OREXX to GTK+. It is built on an OREXX class library and a set of REXX external functions. The OREXX programmer only deals with the class library. Currently the project only runs on Linux but a Windows version of the project is being developed. The presentation will describe the project in detail and demonstrate the package. The project is expected to eventually be hosted on the IBM developerWorks site.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	Rexx/DW
Speaker:	Mark Hessling
Abstract:	Currently there is only one cross-platform GUI extension for Rexx available; Rexx/Tk. Rexx/Tk suffers from the overhead of Tcl and the syntax of Rexx/Tk functions is cluttered. The Tk toolkit also produces a look and feel that is aged. Rexx/DW is an attempt to address the disadvantages of Rexx/Tk. It is based on the Dynamic Windows library, which results in a native look and feel application. There is no other underlying scripting language to go through, so the overheads are considerably lower. The syntax for function parameters is also more intuitive to Rexx programmers. A demonstration of a real-life Rexx/DW application, QOCCA, used daily at the presenter's workplace, will also be made.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	On-Demand Cumputing with Rexx
Speaker:	Michael Beer
Abstract:	Why use JAVA or APACHE for a webserver? Many tasks can easily be done using REXX. Serverside REXX is a powerful development environment for internet applications. Hackers cannot use the usual IIS exploits because of a different architecture.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	Concurrency with Object Rexx
Speaker:	Lavrentios Servissoglou
Abstract:	Presentation of inter-object and intra-object concurrency with Object REXX. With the help of examples an overview will be given about message objects, guarded areas, access control over resources, synchronization, and monitoring. The overall goal is to see the advantages of concurrency and how Object REXX reduces the complexity of parallel running tasks.
Papers:	PDF of slides Sample programs

Title:	The Generic Call Interface (GCI)
Speaker:	Florian Große-Coosmann
Abstract:	To leverage the full capabilities of a platform in Rexx, a Rexx extension library is required to wrap the external functionality into a Rexx extension package. This is usually a considerable amount of effort. GCI provides a low-level mechanism to allow the Rexx programmer access to the functionality in shared libraries (or DLLs) directly, without the need of a wrapper library. An overview of the GCI calling mechanism and a demonstration is given.
Papers:	PDF of slides Slides and sample programs

Title:	Rexx-based Intranet Solution
Speaker:	John Taschler
Abstract:	The main target of this project is building a web-based infrastructure for most of the internal administrative tasks, as well as an organization-wide information system. All active scripting is done using Rexx and some parts of the system which are not web-based are Rexx programs as well. It shows that Rexx may be considered as language of choice for rapid development of systems, including access to databases, usage of smart-card technology (PCSC) and web techniques.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	A Large Netrexx Application
Speaker:	Renè Jansen
Abstract:	A large commercial Bank in the Netherlands uses an in-house Metadata Repository Application for model management of data models for Managament Information Systems (Data Warehouses). This application is completely written in NetRexx, except for the userinterface, which is generated using NetBeans. This presentation concerns the issues in designing and developing a large multiuser client-server NetRexx application and gives a clear picture of the advantages of doing so.
Papers:	PDF of slides (10mb)

Title:	A Large Mainframe Rexx Application
Speaker:	Anthony Rudd
Abstract:	The presentation discusses the design aspects for an application development workbench that runs on a mainframe. The application is written in REXX and ISPF (approx. 200 execs, 150 panels, 70 skeletons; total REXX code approx. 6000 statements (including comment lines)). In particular, the presentation discusses the following aspects: designing for maintainability designing for extensibility designing for performance run-time debugging the (limited) need for customised programs potential conflicts and solutions for the above points
Papers:	PDF of slides PDF of video presentation

Title:	Enhancing High-Level Traceability in Rexx
Speaker:	Les Koehler
Abstract:	Enhancing High-Level Traceablility in Rexx Although the Trace capability of Rexx is much better than that of other languages, it is often either 'to much' or 'not quite right' for recording the actual execution. This presentation will show some of the tools that the author uses to solve this problem, including: TRACK A tool for tracking subroutine calls with source line numbers and selective tracing. CALL An extension to the Call instruction that allows the target to be resolved from a variable. Also tracks the nesting level and provides indenting.
Papers:	HTML of slides

Title:	DATERGF: From Rexx to Java to Object Rexx
Speaker:	Michael Warmuth
Abstract:	Rony G. Flatscher created a marvelous time and date calculation package for REXX several years ago, called DATERGF. Later on he re-designed it in an object oriented fashion as Java classes. It seems obvious that this should be the starting point to move DATERGF back to REXX - back to OREXX classes. The speech gives a short introduction into date and time calculation and their importance, describes the construction of the classes and used methods as an example of OREXX programming and shows the use of the DATERGF classes in "real world" examples.
Papers:	PDF of slides

Title:	DB-123: a Rexx Tool for Migrating COBOL Apps
Speaker:	Thomas Schneider
Abstract:	DB-123 implements a COBOL based Data Management and Program Migration Tool. Based on DB-123's Data Dictionary, various COBOL program generators are available to generate DOWNLOAD or EURO*Conversion programs as well as COBOL access functions for DB2 Databases. Concurrently, some COBOL Pre-Processors are included for migrating DL/I databases and programs to DB2, for instance. The session shows practical examples of the DL/I to DB2 conversion process carried out at an Austrian book-club (Donauland) in the past year (2003).
Papers:	PDF of slides