TPF/GI provides the features that TPF application programmers need.

Features in detail (FlashPaper | PDF)

Many of the following feature descriptions include online demos. To view the demos, you must have the Flash Player installed for your browser.

Client/Server Architecture

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TPF/GI’s architecture is 100% client/server. That means that, during testing, execution of applications occurs on the server while presentation occurs on the client PC.

Because execution occurs on the server, TPF/GI avoids file and data synchronization pitfalls that await client-only tools. And because presentation occurs on the client, TPF/GI is not limited to a green-screen, 3270 interface the way that server-only tools are.

Graphical User Inteface

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TPF/GI’s user interface is fully graphical, taking complete advantage of the Windows environment with no screen scraping. It offers

• Intuitive use of color;
• Easy pull-down and right-click menus;
• Multiple windows for simultaneous display of data;
• Tool buttons and tool tips;
• Point-and-click and drag-and-drop actions;
• Docking and undocking windows;
• Copy, cut, and paste;
• Multi-page dialog boxes — and more.

TPF/GI’s graphical user interface dramatically cuts training time and improves programmer efficiency. Worldspan, for example, has found that programmers can be trained in hours rather than days, and that Worldspan workers are so much more efficient that the company gains tens of thousands of hours in productivity every year.

Source View

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Source View is TPF Software's ground-breaking product that provides source code level debugging for TPF/GI and CMSTPF.

Before Source View, TPF programmers could only trace and debug their applications at the machine level. Source View revolutionized TPF debugging by allowing programmers to step through and observe their source code while they tested their TPF application programs. For the first time, TPF application programmers could concentrate on the logic of their programs and not be concerned with the machine code generated by the compiler.

Source View supports TPF Application programs written in Assembler, Sabre Talk (PL/TPF), C, and C++.

TPF/GI brings the power of "mainstream" debugging tools to TPF testing.

• Source-level debugging allows programmers to view their C, C++, Assembler, or Sabre Talk source code while they debug. 
• One-click breakpoints make it easy to set and remove breakpoints even in Assembler code. No other TPF debugging environment can claim this. 
• Local Variable Windows and watch windows let programmers view and edit the values of variables in their code. 
• The Linkmap Window lets programmers view and navigate among all the source files and functions that make up the application, DLL, or DLM that is being tested. 
• The Assembler Expression Facility lets users view and edit assembler expressions, bringing "high-level language" power to Assembler debugging.

Sophisticated Mapped Block Editing

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TPF/GI’s “block editor” windows allow users to browse and edit blocks of data such as core, file, program, or other blocks. Data can be viewed and edited in both hex and character format.

Users can overlay the data in block editor windows with structures corresponding to DSECTS. These mapped structures can contain label fields, hex fields, and character fields with different font colors, background colors, and font attributes (bold, italic, underline).

Other block editor features:

• Automatic update while stepping, with altered bytes appearing in a contrasting color;
• Copy and paste of hex data only, character data only, or entire lines of both hex, character, and label data;
• Drag and drop of hex or character data;
• Full undo and redo of editing changes;
• Forward chaining and backward chaining when appropriate to the type of data;
• Double click of addresses opens additional core blocks; right click opens additional file blocks;
• Two different views of the same block in the same window;
• Overtyping of ranges of hex or character data with a couple of keystrokes;
• Full forward and backward search;
• Saving, restoring, and printing of data.

Expressions and Variables

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Variables Window
The Variables window in TPF/GI allows C and C++ programmers to view and edit local variables and the hidden “this” variable in their human-readable formats. Programmers can read char arrays in string format, view doubles in fixed point format, view shorts, ints, and longs in decimal format, and access each individual element of an array.

The Variables window lets all local variables be modified as well as viewed. Programmers can simply overtype a value in order to interactively test their applications. Struct fields, class fields, and array elements can also be modified. The window updates each time users stop in source-level trace, and changed values are highlighted in red.

Watch Expression Window
The Watch Expression window, new in version 2.6.1, allows C and C++ programmers to view and edit expressions involving all variables, including non-local variables. The Watch Expression window boasts all the human-friendly features of the Local Variable window, but it adds the ability to watch individual elements in an array and individual members in struct or class. In addition, complex multi-variable expressions are supported, such as p->m[n] and a>=(b*c)-1.

Assembler Expression Facility
Using the Assembler Expression facility, programmers can watch and edit the results of Assembler and SabreTalk expressions while they step through their source code.

Reduced Resource Utilization

TPF/GI utilizes hardware resources more efficiently than any other TPF testing system.

Virtual Environment
TPF/GI provides each programmer with a virtual environment in which to test. Because of this virtual environment, hardware bottlenecks disappear. For example, when one TPF/GI client company asked all of its programmers to test simultaneously, the needle on resource utilization hardly bumped.

TPF/GI's intelligent use of resources greatly reduces your company's need for new hardware. For more information, please see Why TPF/GI should be in your application-testing toolbox.

Data and Program Isolation

TPF/GI gives each programmer the equivalent of a private test system, yet still provides easy access to the full test system database. This private test system allows TPF/GI to provide data and program isolation.

With other test tools, when multiple testers use the same test system, one programmer’s errors can interrupt or invalidate the results that other programmers on the same system receive.

In TPF/GI, however, each programmer’s testing in TPF/GI is uninterrupted and the results are more reliable, improving application quality and reducing debugging time.

Read more:

• Why TPF/GI should be in your application-testing toolbox
• Top Ten Reasons to use TPF/GI

TPF/GI's Diagnostic Checks

No other TPF testing system can enforce quality checks on code as TPF/GI can.

During testing, TPF/GI resets the values of registers across macros, ensuring that mission-critical applications don't depend on a value left in a register by mistake.

And TPF/GI won't allow programs being tested to access data outside their ECB enironments.

Other TPF testing systems simply cannot make these checks or the many other diagnostic checks enforced by TPF/GI.

Read more:

• Why TPF/GI should be in your application-testing toolbox

Remote Connectivity

TPF/GI provides the best of all worlds by giving programmers private TPF systems and access remote resources through the CTFS product.

Plugin Tools and API

TPF/GI's Plug-In Tools API allows programmers to plug their own code into TPF/GI by writing DLLs in development environments such as Microsoft Visual C++ and Borland Delphi.

Plugin Tools

Scripting

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Programmers can write scripts to automate tasks that they perform in TPF/GI. Scripts can be written in VBScript, JScript, or PerlScript and are distinct from the message input files that TPF/GI uses to play back input into terminals.

Instead, scripts are much more wide-ranging and powerful. They can add files to source-level trace, set breakpoints, run programs, send in command-line input, open windows, clear terminals, send attention identifier codes to Local 3270 terminals, run multiple message files, display dialog boxes, and perform many other actions.

Intuitive Access to ECBs

TPF/GI’s ECB window is a compact, graphical, intuitive display of ECB contents that users can browse and edit. The ECB window gives access to everything a programmer needs to know or change about an ECB:

• the Program Status Word,
• the ECB address, program name and program address,
• the register values,
• the data levels,
• the new dynamic data levels (DECBs),
• the current machine instruction,
• a tree view of the current program nesting level,
• the auto blocks,
• the EBW area,
• the EBX area,
• the data levels area,
• the system area,
• page 1 and page 2.

The ECB window is not only informative, but intuitive to use. For example, when programmers need to know what a register points to, all they have to do is double click the register and a window appears containing the contents at that register address. If programmers want to do a FLIPC, they can drag one data level and drop it on another. If they want to get core, they can drag a core icon and drop it on a data level.

These examples only scratch the surface of what the ECB window can do to help TPF programmers interactively test and understand their applications.

Macro and Instruction Trace

TPF/GI has powerful low-level trace facilities that help programmers track down problems. These low-level trace facilities include the macro trace, instruction trace, address stops, and trace store.

The macro trace facility allows users to trace individual macros, macros by categories, or all macros. The instruction trace allows users to select which instructions to trace in a similar way.

The powerful instruction trace translates every machine instruction being traced into mnemonics displaying the values of the base register, any index register, and displacements. Any new computed values are displayed clearly, and the data in storage for the computed value is also displayed.

The trace store facility allows users to symbolically indicate that TPF/GI should notify them when data is stored into a TPF data structure. The TPF data structure could be the ECB, a data level, data levels based on record ID or record address, globals and specific core addresses.

All the low-level trace information is recorded in the trace output log, where it can be viewed “live” with TPF/GI’s Trace Output Viewer.

Convenient TPFDF Debugging

TPF/GI's TPFDF debugging feature means that users no longer have to resort to a command level interface to list what DF files are open, examine the SWOOSR record, or to find out the last action taken on the record. Instead, TPF/GI dynamically creates DSECT panels for the DF records and displays these panels in the same block editor windows that it uses to display core and file information. DF information is clearly labeled and is editable.

The DF windows refresh their contents automatically whenever an ECB stops or exits.