IBM Rational® Business Developer and its Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) services enable programmers to leverage the technology of Java, JEE, browser platforms, cloud deployment, databases, IBM i, and IBM Z systems without having to learn all the underlying technologies.
Paired with powerful capabilities to support cross-platform development, Rational Business Developer is designed to hide the technical details of the deployment platform and associated middleware programming interfaces. This allows the developer to focus on the business problem rather than the underlying implementation technologies.
Try the IBM Rational Business Developer 9.7 trial.
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Tour: Enterprise Generation Language
Tutorial: Understand the workbench environment
Tutorial: Introducing EGL
Use or create configurations of coding rules for EGL source code, and run the configurations to check the source code for consistency with the rules.
Build modern applications and/or integrate with legacy systems using tooling that handles multiple technologies.
Build applications using modern tools and frameworks: GIT for source control, Swagger and MQ integration for cloud deployment, Spring for REST services, and Cordova for hybrid mobile applications.
Modernized rich UI (Web 2.0 and mobile) with drag and drop for services and automated user interface generation.
IBM Rational Business Developer is an Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE) that simplifies the development of Web 2.0, mobile, cloud based, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and traditional applications using the Enterprise Generation Language (EGL). Developers can deliver Web 2.0 and mobile applications and services without having to master Java and SOA programming. Developers can create, test and debug EGL applications while generating Java, JavaScript or COBOL code for deployment.
This software supports development and deployment of traditional green screen applications for IBM i and IBM Z systems. It supports development and deployment of services to IBM WebSphere® Application Server on multiple platforms as well as cloud platforms. For user interfaces, it supports development and deployment of Web 2.0 applications on a browser as well as on mobile platforms. IBM Rational Business Developer allows developers to work within the familiar Eclipse-based environment, leveraging existing development skills.
This software uses a single, high-level language for streamlined development of the business application. It generates different languages for a single application, such as JavaScript for an application user interface and Java or COBOL for the application back end. This software increases productivity and reduces the technology learning curve to improve business agility and competitiveness.
IBM Rational Business Developer extends existing IT assets and provides the extensibility, scalability and productivity features of an Eclipse-based platform. It integrates with IBM Developer for z/OS, IBM Rational Developer for i, and IBM Rational Software Architect, and integrates with IBM Rational Team Concert™ for advanced configuration, source control and change management.
To install the product, you must meet several requirements, including requirements for hardware, software, server environment, and operating systems.
Before you install the product, verify that your hardware and software meet or exceed the minimum requirements. If your hardware and software do not meet the minimum requirements, you might not be able to install or run the product.
You must have a user ID that meets specific requirements before you can install your product. Requirements are provided for Windows Vista, other Windows versions and Linux clients.
Comprehensive, robust toolset for developing z/OS applications
An integrated development environment (IDE) built on the Eclipse platform, designed for creating and maintaining applications on IBM i systems.
Leverage abstraction to reduce complexity and communicate designs and models concisely, and visualize solutions, relationships and impacts.
Frequently asked questions
IBM® Rational® Business Developer 9.7 contains the latest enhancements across the various technologies within the product and includes fixes from previous releases.
- New servicelib function - getRestResponseHeaders
- New servicelib functions for setting REST response
- JSON support for AS400
- CDATA section support for XML
- Improved Support For Nullable Records
- Support for array initialization with a variable size
- Detailed error message title for EGL ant tasks
- Integration of IBM Debugger and enabling debugging of EGL/COBOL code on ZOSBatch and CICS
- Passphrase Implementation
Eclipse GIT (eGIT) integration for EGL source code. Users can add services to the EGL data view by dragging and dropping them into EGL RUI’s design pane. This enables users to quickly add back end code to their front-end RUI pages.
- REST API support for EGL services
- Enhanced Support for Message Queue oriented applications
- Support for MQ Topics (Publish/Subscribe in COBOL and Java environments
- Support for more MQ provides on Java – RabbitMQ and Apache ActiveMQ
- Support for JMS in IBM MQ and Apache deployments
- Spring REST support
- Creation of Cloud-native applications and associated docker files
- Support for Bootstrap 4 and Ionic 4 frameworks
- Addition of new EGL widgets to support responsive design. For more information see Responsive Design Support in RBD
- REST services support in CICS (provider and invoker) provider on z/OS
- Swagger support for REST API
- Generate SOAP Header fields in WSDL and Client Interfaces
- Ability to set UserID and Password for calling all services by serviceLib.setHTTPBasicAuthentication (UserID, Password)
- Addition of an Ant task named egl.createInterfaceFromWSDL to enable creation of EGL interface from a WSDL file via Ant
A new boolean property cdata has been added to the @XMLElement annotation. This indicates whether the record field to be written to an XML string is wrapped in a CDATA tag or not.
This version and previous versions have meta headers for generated HTML, allowing for the separation of Javascript contents into another file in the deployed HTML and the disabling of content assist.
The deepNullCheck build descriptor specifies whether any variable will check the null status of the referred value when compared to null. Also, two build options, defaultServiceHttpBasicUserId and defaultServiceHttpBasicPassword, specify the default UserID and Password for calling all services.