Text Editors

There are a number of text editors out there that support syntax highlighting for PeopleSoft related programming including SQR, COBOL, PeopleCode and Meta-SQL. However the two best, free ones are PSPad and NotePad++.

My preference is PSPad but really they are both as good as each other.

Syntax Files

PSPad Syntax Files

Here are links to down the PeopleCode.INI and SQR.INI syntax files.

The following instructions explain how to install them in PSPad:

PeopleCode syntax file

1. Copy PeopleCode.INI to C:\Program Files\PSPad\Syntax (or wherever PSPad is installed)
2. Start PSPad. Navigate to Settings -> Highlighter Settings in the menu.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the highlighter languages and select the first of the <not assigned> checkboxes.
4. On the right, go to the Specifications tab and scroll down user highlighters until you find PeopleCode. If you can't find it, make sure you did the copy in Step 1 to the right place.
5. Go the colors tab and update the following colors - this is to get it to match application designer. You don't have to do this.

• Comment to a dark green and italic font
• Identifier, Number, PreProcessor, Space and Symbol to black (if not already)
• Key, Key Words 2, Key Words 3, Reserved Words to blue
• Label and String to red

1. Apply the settings and press OK.
2. This will now automatically highlight any files with the extension .pcode. For any other files you can choose View -> Change Syntax and select PeopleCode to apply the PeopleCode syntax.

SQR syntax file

1. Copy SQR.INI to C:\Program Files\PSPad\Syntax (or wherever PSPad is installed)
2. Start PSPad. Navigate to Settings -> Highlighter Settings in the menu.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the highlighter languages and select the second of the <not assigned> checkboxes.
4. On the right, go to the Specifications tab and scroll down user highlighters until you find PeopleCode. If you can't find it, make sure you did the copy in Step 1 to the right place.
5. Go the colors tab and update the following colors - this is my preference my SQR files:

• Comment to a dark green and italic font
• Identifier, PreProcessor, Space and Symbol to black (if not already)
• Key, Key Words 2, Key Words 3, Reserved Words to blue and bold font
• Label, Number and String to red.

1. Apply the settings and press OK.
2. This will now automatically highlight any files with the extension .sqr or .sqc. For any other files you can choose View -> Change Syntax and select SQR to apply the SQR syntax.

NotePad++ Syntax Files

Check out the Grey Sparling Blog about how to do this and to get the syntax files in XML format.

UltraEdit

Check out this article from ERP associates about using UltraEdit for running SQR.

Running and Validating SQRs

Check out this post about running and validating (syntax checking) SQRs using NotePad++ and the NppExec functionality. Very useful.