IBM has announced new automated unit testing capabilities for CICS COBOL programs using Db2 with IBM Developer for z/OS (IDz) V14.2.1.
IBM Developer for z/OS is a modern, robust toolset for developing and maintaining IBM z/OS applications through the use of DevOps practices. It offers COBOL, PL/I, HLASM, Java and C/C++ development tools for IBM CICS, IBM IMS, and IBM Db2 on an Eclipse base.
For mainframe developers, the automation of testing is a key component for agile development. However, the tools on the market to address this need are limited, and lacking true, complete automation capabilities, IBM says.
The new capabilities were announced in an IBM Developer blog post.
The announcement builds on IBM's February announcement around IBM Z Open Unit Test by offering:
- New support for stubbing out CICS Db2 completely—This enables development shops to automate their testing processes for complex applications.
- New data record and playback capabilities for CICS Db2 programs—This newly enhanced functionality enables interception of EXEC CICS and EXEC SQL application calls under CICS to allow data capture during a live run. This recorded data can then be used as the basis for creating more unit tests, including negative tests. In addition, this capability lets users run their automated unit tests as a batch job, without a need to deploy to CICS.
- Automated unit testing capabilities for CICS Db2 that are independent of a debugging tool, reducing the load on the system and system programmers—In addition to existing support for exporting test results in JUnit and SonarQube formats, you can now export your results as a PDF or in XML. This allows you to work with your test results and form detailed reports outside of IDz.
- Improved user experience for generating and executing automated unit tests. This includes new ways to filter recorded data for modification, as well as general performance improvements.