Editing BMS

Introduction 

This article deals with the editing features for BMS files used in your project.   We will see how to edit the BMS in both textual form and inside a BMS Painter

You can create a BMS Mapset and add Maps to that Mapset. You can also edit existing Mapsets and Maps.

We will see later, when we compile the BMS, that the relevant COBOL copy file is generated.

For now we will use the supplied Bankdemoproject. You can edit a Mapset as pure text. But the default is to edit interactively using a screen painter.

Before you start, since we are editing, it is strongly recommended that you make a backup copy of this file. (You will find it inside C:\\MFETDUSER\\BankDemo\\Sources\\bms).

1.       In the COBOL explorer, under BMS Source Files - Right-click on the BMS file MBANK10.BMS and select Open With, then BMS Editor

This is textual view of the BMS file. You can see that colorization has been used to help you with this editing.

This is using the same text editor that we say earlier in the COBOL and JCL editing.

It can be edited here but, as I am sure you know, text editing a BMS file is an extremely error prone-process. So, close this textual view for the BMS file.

A better way to edit is as follows is with the interactive screen editor:

2.       Right-click on the BMS file MBANK10.BMS and select open with BMS Painter.

BMS Screen Painter Overview

The BMS Screen Painter is divided into two major components.

• The MAPSET structure on the left expands to display the Mapset, Maps, and fields contained on a map.
• The Screen painter on the right is used to add, modify, and delete fields on the screen.

The BMS Screen Painter Structure provides a context sensitive menu for each of the components of the BMS.

The menu displayed is dependent upon the component selected.

Next: Recognizing BMS fields