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WPS Workbench

Integrated Development Environment

For the Windows platform, WPS has the added benefit of an Integrated Development Environment known as the WPS Workbench. The WPS Workbench can be used for creating, modifying, debugging and maintaining 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: coloured syntax highlighting, type-ahead help and local history/version control.

WPS Workbench uses a client/server model to execute programs written in the language of SAS. The server component provides the interpreter that handles all the language support. The WPS server is written entirely in C, C++ and Assembler.

Eclipse Platform

The WPS Workbench is based on the Eclipse Platform and is written in Java. Eclipse is an open source platform that is maintained and used 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 popular and easy-to-use development environment familiar to many developers and end-users.

User-Customised Environments

The look and feel of the WPS Workbench is totally customizable in the style of many modern IDE's. 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 resized and positioned to taste and can then be saved under a user-defined name as a perspective. Only one perspective is active at any time but you can quickly and easily switch between perspectives.

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

Editing Tools

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

These features include syntax highlighting, find and replace, copy and paste and a sophisticated search facility that can scan just the program you have open all the way up to scanning all files in multiple projects.

A bookmark facility allows you to tag a line in a program, meaning that at a later date you can automatically re-open 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 these can also be clicked on to quickly jump to the relevant lines of code.

Source Code Control and Team Working

It is easy to integrate WPS Workbench with a source code control feature such as CVS, allowing multiple users to 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.

Local History

WPS Workbench automatically keeps track of all the changes and edits 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.

Output

There are a several explorer views in WPS Workbench that allow you to list, open, view, print or save the various output files that are created as a result of executing your programs.

For example:

• The Output Explorer View allows you to manipulate logs, listing output and ODS output.
• The Library Explorer View allows you to manipulate libraries, datasets, views, catalogs, filerefs, etc.

Dependencies and Usage

The WPS Core module is required to use WPS Workbench.

WPS Workbench is presently only for use on the Windows platform.