WDSc Filters and Filter Pools

Article ID: 19283

Posted September 9th, 2004

No Department

If you have WDSc installed, you are likely in Remote Systems Explorer (RSE) often, and if your shop is like others, organization of objects for specific projects can become menacing. That is where Filters and Filter Pools come in. They allow you to logically organize views of your systems objects. For instance, if you have a project that includes RPG, CL, and DDS in different source physical files and libraries, you can bring them all together into one view by defining a Filter.

Figure 1 shows how to create a Member filter by right clicking on iSeries Objects within connection My iSeries. After clicking this, the New Member Filter window will come up and prompt you for the first filter criteria. Figure 2 shows a member filter for all members that start with "CALL" in source physical file ALBARTELL/QSOURCE. Note that this is just the first entry in the filter, and once you name the filter "Project 1 Filter," in Figure 3, you can go back to RSE to add more filter criteria. Notice the checkbox entitled "Only create filter in this connection." When this is selected, the filter will only be added to the currently selected connection. The benefit of selecting this becomes apparent when you have more than one iSeries connection defined.

Figure 4 shows the newly created filter with the source members that met the criteria. You can now change this filter by right clicking on "Project 1 Filter" and selecting "Change." Figure 5 shows the Change Member Filter window where I am adding criteria to include source that starts with SCN from source physical file AARONLIB/QCLSRC. Make sure to select "New filter string" in the left pane; otherwise, you will be writing over an existing filter entry. If you keep all of your source in one physical file that doesn't denote the source type (e.g., QCLSRC most likely contains CL members, but QSOURCE will contain all different source types), you can make use of the "Member types to subset by:" option.

Figure 6 shows the source members meeting the criteria in the filter. If that isn't a cool way to logically organize your code, I don't know what is!

Next, I'll explain "filter pools." Filter pools are used to organize the many filters that you may have created. To show you the usefulness of filter pools, I will first present a scenario where they can be used. In the previous screen shots, I only had one iSeries connection defined. In Figure 7, I have defined another connection to a different iSeries and "Project 1 Filter" is in the new connection. Library ALBARTELL does not exist on this iSeries and has come up with a nice little message stating so. If you do not specify the current connection when you create a filter, it will go in the default filter pool. This filter pool is available to all connections by default. To see which filter pools are specified for each connection, click on the down arrow at the top of the RSE view as shown in Figure 8 and select "Show Filter Pools." You should now see the same named filter pool right below the iSeries Objects level. Mine is named "Tdalbartell2 Filter Pool."

To change the "iSeries Prod" connection so that it does not reference the default filter pool, right click on iSeries Objects in the iSeries Prod connection and select Select Filter Pools. Figure 9 shows that there is only one filter pool to deselect. By deselecting this filter pool, you will no longer have any filter pools specified for the iSeries Prod connection. Personally, I like to create one filter pool per connection and name it the same as the connection. To do this, right click on iSeries Objects within the iSeries Prod connection as shown in Figure 10 and select New -> Filter Pool. In the window that comes up, type in "iSeries Prod" for the name and click Finish. Figure 11 shows an example.

Great! Now you have separate filter pools for each connection! Wait, the new filter pool doesn't have any content. It is completely empty! I have found that I always want certain items in each filter pool, such as "Work with members." To copy "Work with members" from another filter pool, right click on it and select "copy." A window will pop up, as shown in Figure 12, that allows you to specify the destination filter pool.

There is also a window that's dedicated to working with filter pools, but it is lacking in features at this time. While the filter pools are displayed in RSE, right click on any iSeries Objects icon and select Work With -> Filter Pools. Figure 13 shows you the window where you can manage your filter pools.

You are now on your way to a well-organized workspace!