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Features

WPS Workbench

Development Environment

For the Windows platform, WPS has the added benefit of a development environment known as the WPS Workbench. The WPS Workbench can be used for creating new and maintaining existing programs written in the language of SAS.

The WPS Workbench provides a dedicated editor for applications written in the language of SAS. Amongst the many features this editor provides are colour highlighting, type ahead help and history control.

WPS Workbench uses a client server model to execute SAS programs. The server component is the exclusive information-processing application that handles all the supported language statements. The WPS server is written in C++ and Assembler and does not in any way utilise any interpreted JAVA code in order to process SAS language statements.

Eclipse Platform

WPS Workbench is based on the Eclipse platform and is written in Java. Eclipse is an open source platform that is created by a wide ranging consortium of vendors such as IBM, Intel, HP, Fujitsu, Rational and Red Hat.

The Eclipse framework supports the integration and interoperability of multiple tools and offers developers a flexible plug-in architecture allowing them to customize the environment with the tools to meet specific needs. As a result, it is a rich and easy-to-use development environment.

User Customized Environments

The look of the WPS Workbench is totally customizable. Within the main window any number of child windows or views can be opened such as editors, error logs, explorers and menus. These can be sized and positioned to your taste and then saved under a user defined name as a perspective. Only one perspective is active at any time but you can quickly and easily flip between perspectives.

WPS Workbench comes with a pre-configured perspective for the general creation, running and debugging of programs.

SAS Program Editing

WPS Workbench has a rich set of functions to assist in editing programs written in the language of SAS.

These features range from syntax highlighting, find and replace, copy and paste to a sophisticated search facility that can be as simple as scanning the program you have open to scanning all files in multiple projects.

A bookmark facility allows you to tag a line in a program and days later automatically re-opening the program and navigate back to the bookmark.

As you would expect, the editor window also uses colour coding to distinguish between different language elements.

The editor window's left and right hand borders also have features to help in the display and navigation of your code. For example, there are controls to collapse and expand blocks of your program, coloured markers to indicate where you have made changes and that can also be clicked on to quickly jump to those lines of code.

Source Code Control and Team Working

It is easy to integrate WPS Workbench into a source code control feature such as CVS. This also means that multiple users can work on the same project. Before committing your work, you can visually check for and compare against any other modifications that other team members have made. You then have complete control on merging the information.

Local History

Whether or not you utilise any additional source code control, the WPS Workbench will always automatically keep track of changes you make to individual programs. This means you can edit and even save a program but still be able to compare or revert back to an earlier version.

Availability

WPS Workbench is not available on its own. It is part of WPS when supplied for the Windows Platform.

WPS Workbench is not available on the z/OS platform.