Launching a 3270 emulator from Zowe Explorer
Many enterprise application development teams engaged in long-term projects have numerous tools, utilities, jobs, processes, and best practices that rely on a traditional 3270 development environment. Remote Connection Emulator (RCE) integrates traditional 3270 tools and practices into Z Open Editor via Zowe Explorer. It provides access to the mainframe for viewing unique information and mainframe tools and processes that are not available in Zowe Explorer. By using Remote Connection Emulator, you can connect to the remote system and open a full-screen emulator. Z Open Editor's RCE client is based on the same technology as the RCE client built into the IBM Developer for z/OS Eclipse client. See its documentation here for more information on various features and settings.
Some key features of RCE are
- Many personal configuration options such as color mappings, fonts, screen size, etc.
- Screen size adapts to browser window size.
- Screen keyboard and personalized custom key mappings.
- Advanced selection and "cross-hair support" for copy, cutting, and pasting text.
- BiDi support, e.g. for languages such as Hebrew.
Z Open Editor's RCE client depends on a web server that runs on IBM Remote System Explorer (RSE) API server. Once provisioned and configured, it can be accessed utilizing the RSE API profile a Z Open Editor user has created for Zowe Explorer. The information provided by the profile will be used to authenticate and check entitlement on the RSE API server before opening the 3270 session in the user's default Web browser. This action is added by Z Open Editor as a new context menu command in Zowe Explorer's tree view allowing the user to launch the 3270 emulator for a specific Zowe Explorer profile of type RSE API.
Requirements
z/OS components
- RSE API 1.2.1 or higher, which is part of the z/OS Explorer 3.4.1 product needs to be installed for the host defined in the RSE profile.
- Emulator configuration, the RSE API documentation specifies four emulator parameters that can be configured.(ie RCE_LUNAME, RCE_ENABLE, RCE_PORT, and RCE_SECURITY).
Client components
- The IBM Z Open Editor advanced capabilities VS Code user setting must be selected. See Activating Advanced Capabilities for details.
- A VU license needs to be installed for the host defined in the RSE profile. See Activating Advanced Capabilities for details.
- Zowe Explorer VS Code extension 3.1.1 or higher.
How to launch the emulator
Right click an RSE profile in the Zowe Explorer tree view and select the option to launch the 3270 emulator in an external web browser. Selecting this will prompt user to open the external website, choose Open to launch the emulator. When the web page opens in the browser a host login screen will be shown.
NOTE The RCE 3270 emulator does not support token authentication at this time, users with token authentication in place with their RSE profile will be prompted for their user and password for the launch request.
Troubleshooting
- If the launch 3270 action does not appear in the list of actions for an RSE profile it is likely that either the IBM Z Open Editor advanced capabilities check box is not selected or Zowe Explorer is at a version older than 3.1.1.
- If you get the message CRRZG5370E Timed out launching the 3270 emulator, or the message CRRZG5367E The 3270 emulator was unable to contact the host, it indicates that a connection could not be made to the host. Check that you have internet access to this host.
- If you get the message, CRRZG5371E The 3270 emulator was unable to connect to the host with the specified userid and password, it indicates that a connection was successfully made to the host, however, the userid and/or password specified were not valid. Verfiy that your userid and password are correct.
- If you get the message, CRRZG5372E The 3270 emulator requires a VU license, but none was installed on the host, it indicates that the host you are connecting to does not have a VU license installed. Contact your host administrator to install the VU license.
- If you get the message, CRRZG5373E The 3270 emulator has been disabled on the host, it indicates that your host administrator has disabled the remote emulator functionality on the host. Contact your host administrator to change this.