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I have a piece of Rexx that uses data from a PDS member to put together and display a table of fields along with default values. The values field is an input field, designed to allow the user to update the defaults with their own choices as appropriate. What I can't seem to work out how to do is retrieve the updated information from the panel and store it away for future use.

The table rows are created using TBADD, saved with TBSAVE then displayed using a TBTOP followed by a loop of "TBDISPL [name] PANEL(pname)".

If the next section of Rexx is a loop of TBSKIP and TBGET, the best I can achieve is getting back the original table data (the defaults), ignoring anything the user may have input. Plus this doesn't always seem to happen on the user hitting enter, but rather waits for PF3.

Be grateful for any pointers. I'm quite new to this so atm it's a bit like trying to learn French armed with nothing but a dictionary - syntax is one thing, practical examples would be better!

Chris M
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1 Answers1

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Looks like you are trying to run an ISPF Dialog using REXX. While this is a fairly common thing to be doing, there is a lot of background needed to understand all of the components and how to make them work together.

The following links provide some tutorial and reference material to get you on the right path.

The ISPF Examples is a good place to start. The Table Services Dialog Application might be similar to what you trying to do.

The basic idea is that you have REXX program running under ISPF which is invoking Dialog Manager. REXX asks Dialog Manager to display a particular screen (called a panel). The panel definition is held in a PDS and contains the text to display, input/output variables and various other layout parameters. The panel variables are used to pass data to/from the REXX program through calls to Dialog Manager.

Sounds simple, but as with everything mainframe, there is a lot more to it than you might think.

NealB
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