News - Press Release - December 1996

XDC^® Release X3.2 Now Available!

December, 1996, Afton, VA- Cole Software is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the Extended Debugging Controller's ® newest release! "X3.2" includes both new external features as well as significant internal restructuring that will help to make the product more efficient, more reliable, and more easily maintainable and enhanceable in the future.

What's New: Briefly, new external features include the following:

• HOOKS: XDC has a new "HOOK" command that can be used to dynamically and more easily create XDC debugging environments in code that would otherwise be difficult to debug. Examples:
• If you want to debug code located in a DCB exit routine or in a timer exit or attention exit, previously it was necessary to add code to the exit that issued a LOAD macro and an ESTAE macro in order to activate XDC within the exit routine. Now, the HOOK command can be used to accomplish the same result much more easily and without having to change the source code .
• If different parts of your program run under different abend error recovery environments, and if XDC has not been integrated into all of those environments, then you can use the HOOK command to start a debugging session even in those parts of your program that otherwise would not run within the debugging environment.
• If you want to debug Assembler code that is running within IBM's new " Language Environment ", the HOOK command can be used to insert an XDC debugging environment ahead of LE's error recovery.
• The HOOK command can (security permitting, of course) even be used to start debugging sessions "on the fly" in programs running in other address spaces ! A debugging session created in this way can then be connected to via the Cross Domain Facility.
  
  Generally, the HOOK command greatly simplifies the problems associated with integrating XDC into existing programs that already have their own error recovery structures.
• SECURITY IMPROVEMENTS: Support has been added to XDC that allow a customer to more precisely control the use of XDC's ZAP command (etc.) for altering both private and common memory. Memory alterations can now be controlled according to subpool, load module name, CSECT name, etc. In development shops, this can greatly reduce the number of IPLs created by the careless use of XDC.
• ASCII Support: Users can now display, zap, and search for ASCII encoded text strings.
• Decimal Number Support: Similarly, users can also display, zap, and search for data encoded as signed or unsigned decimal numbers.
  
  Also, Assembler instruction displays can now optionally show operand displacements as decimal numbers instead of hexadecimal.
• Linkage Stacks: XDC now has a new "LIST LSTACK" command that can be used to display linkage stacks and linkage stack entries for any task in any address space.
• TIOTs: "LIST TIOT" is a new command that can display the file allocations for any address space.
• Recovery Environments: "LIST ESTAES" is a new command that display information about the abend error recovery environment that currently exists for any task in any address space. This command shows what ESTAEs or ESTAIs (etc.) exist, which, if any is in control, which, if any have abended or percolated and so on.
• Branch Mnemonics: Formatted memory displays also can now optionally show the more mnemonic forms of the BC and BCR instructions. (Did I hear someone say, "Finally!"?)
• //XDCCDF DD DUMMY: This JCL card is no longer necessary for batch job debugging.
• User Manuals: User manuals now have comprehensive indexes. Hopefully, this will go a long way towards making them more user friendly. [:)]
• PRINT Command: In addition, XDC now has a new "PRINT" command that can be used to print personal copies of any or all of XDC's usage manuals (or of any desired subset of the Online Help), complete with customized indexes.

For more information on Cole Software or XDC contact Robert W. Shimizu at 1 (800) XDC-5150 or sales@colesoft.com.