All:
Good question, Steff. Here we go.
First, I must admit my bias. For 35 years I worked with every customer
Cole Software had, serving as Cole Software's Instructor for many of
those years. Some of you on this list know me. Many more know the
product and Dave Cole, its progenitor.
z/XDC was, and is aimed at Assembler professionals. These people spend
decades learning their craft, much of which is spent encompassing a
devilishly complex environment, z/OS itself.
Based upon the observations of these true coders, z/XDC is the best
thing out there. Nothing else brings the clarity to debugging that
other tools do.
Nothing else allows you to work on APF-authorized, or multitasking code
as easily. It's VASTLY better than causing one dump at a time and
puzzling out what may be going on inside the architecture. Instead, each
Trace or Breakpoint in z/XDC serves as a dump, allowing you to look all
around the A-space (or indeed the system itself) at each point.
Based upon MY observations, I remember lots of "AHA!" moments in the
classes I taught, wherein one or more people would agree, "We WISH we
had this ability years ago!"
LIST PSW F (decodes the PSW so you don't have to interpret the blasted
thing).
LIST TASKS (BANG. There's the task structure for this (or any other)
address space).
FORMAT <adders-expression>. Disassemble ANYWHERE. If ADATA is available
to z/XDC you see source code. If C source code is available you see
your C statements. If nothing is available, you get disassembled object
code).
That's not even a hundredth of the commands out there in the product.
z/XDC's interface is clunky. It's a retooled 3270 "thing" that most new
people hate. It can be learned. There is active work being done on a
GUI, and that should bring z/XDC into the 21st Century at last.
Like the z/XDC product itself, z/XDC's documentation is comprehensive,
authoritative and absolutely impenetrable to the casual observer. In
essence the product's documentation is a "dump" of the internal Help
Subsystem (which requires learning in order to navigate).
That is why I wrote several books that attempt to bring z/XDC out into
the light, illuminating it's major features and smoothing the way to
understanding. I would suggest that you begin with the z/XDC Primer,
which uses one of our internal programs as a test bed. You won't have
to have the product active to learn and understand what the tool does.
Go here and scroll to the bottom of this page.
<https://colesoft.com/support/zxdc-release-z22?_gl=1*1wj2fs*_ga*MzkyODkxMTQ3LjE3NjI3MDIzMDE.*_ga_NN1M65S85L*czE3NjI3MDIzMDAkbzEkZzAkdDE3NjI3MDIzMDAkajYwJGwwJGgw>
I no longer work for Cole Software, but I haven't lost my chops. Steff,
please, what are your questions? What aspects of Assembler give you the
most grief? What challenges do you face in your work with Assembler
under z/OS? I may be able to point you in the right direction.
My contemporary, Frank Chu (CC'd) is one of the product's Senior
Developers. Frank can answer any of your deeper questions. He's also a
helpful guy. He'll be happy to guide you further if/when I can't take
you any further.
Sincerely,
Bob
On 11/9/25 04:12, Steff Gladstone wrote:
We are looking into acquiring an assembler debugging tool. Nearly two
decades ago I used the z/XDC tool at an earlier employer. Is this tool
still considered top-of-the-line? Are there other tools considered more
powerful or friendly?
Thanks,
Steff Gladstone
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