Inline Code

The following list consists of our recommendations while using the inline code in Toolset:

Use the inline code statement for code that cannot be written in CA Gen Procedure Action Diagram (PAD). For example, IF statements can be written in CA Gen but calls to the external functionality cannot. So, use the inline code statement to call external functionality.
If the inline code statement involves multiple steps, consider splitting each step into a separate inline code statement. This splitting helps debugging because you can use the CA Gen Diagram Trace Utility to determine which inline code statement is causing problems rather than having to use a source code debugger. Exceeding the limit of number of lines per statement, that is imposed by the compiler, may cause trouble in either displaying, generating, or compiling the statement.
Copy all references to view variables to locally defined variables in the inline code statement before using them. Copy all locally defined variables back to view references before exiting the statement. This is especially true for host variables because the host variables generated for ENTITY ACTION views are not accessible in the inline code statement.
To trace the inline code, use the native code debugger. Set the CA Gen Build Tool variables so that you can compile the source code of the parent action diagram with debug enabled and the native code debugger works correctly.
The Java Import statements and C# Using statements can be specified in the Global Variable Declarations field. All the Import or Using statements must be specified at the beginning of this field and nowhere else.
If the inline code statement contains the delimiter (##) of view reference as data, these delimiter characters may cause invalid code generation or failure of code generation. To avoid this scenario, follow these steps:
1. To refer a string literal containing the ## character sequence, declare and use a global variable.
2. To escape the ## character sequence, use the constructs specific to your language.
  - Example in C: \x23#<text>#\x23
  - Example in C# and Java: \u0023#<text>#\u0023
The C Include files and COBOL Copybooks may be specified in the Global Variables field of the INLINE CODE statement. References to COBOL Copybooks are included in the WORKING STORAGE section of the code.
Do not use the TAB key while typing inline code statements or declarations in COBOL.
For COBOL, the Global Variables field may be used to specify the following sections:
- INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.
- FILE-CONTROL.
- DATA DIVISION.
- FILE SECTION.
These sections may be added to support file access from COBOL action diagrams.

Note: Type these sections in upper-case followed by a period as shown above.

Important! The Inline Code statement allows the user the ability to add code for any supported language, database, and environment that is supported by CA Gen, but the user will occasionally encounter circumstances where the code will not compile, link, or execute. This may be true even for code that was previously working in an External Action Block.

The following are a couple of mainframe specific types of coding, that we are aware of, that the current implementation of the inline code statement will not support:

EXEC CICS: These types of statements will not work even if CICS is selected as the target environment for the application. The reason is that EXEC CICS code must be translated before it can be compiled and using either the separate CICS translator or the CICS-integrated translator modifies the application code in ways that require extra processing that is currently not handled by Gen application generation and installation.

WebSphere MQ statements: While it may be possible to reference queues that were created to use with the Gen application, because we have no mechanism currently to define other queues to the application so this will make it difficult to use MQ constructs within an Inline Code statement. Also, there are differences in the link deck that are required to use MQ API statements which are currently not supported by Gen application installation.

There are bound to be other circumstances where code will not work in an Inline Code statement and we welcome input from our customers about these situations and will update the Best Practices Guide to document them so that other users will benefit from the experiences. We also welcome any input into how we might be able to support these unsupported coding circumstances and, depending on the level of customer desire for the functionality, we will add this functionality to our backlog to be worked on at the soonest possible time.