What is new and noteworthy

Important notices

Important notice

New feature

• Apache Groovy 4.0
  DBB v1.1.3 has upgraded the Apache Groovy installation that is included in the DBB Toolkit from Groovy 2.4.12 to Groovy 4.0. As stated in the Important notice above, this upgrade required some changes to the DBB sample scripts. You must update your local copies of the DBB Community Samples to v1.1.3 and DBB zAppBuild to v2.4.0. See Release notes for Groovy 4.0 for more information about Groovy 4.0.

Important notice

New features

• DBB Web Application User Interface
  The DBB Web Application is used to store metadata produced during the build process. DBB produces two types of build metadata:

  • Dependency information captured as logical files and stored in collections. This information is used for the impact analysis of changed files.
  • Build results organized in Build Groups, which provide a place to store the return codes, error messages, and file attachments produced by a build.

  Prior releases of DBB provided a simple read-only web view of the build metadata. Beginning in DBB v1.1.2, a new modern web view is available. It provides better organization, sort capabilities and the ability to delete obsolete data. For more information, see Managing DBB collections and build results with the DBB web view

• Introducing the SearchPathDependencyResolver and SearchPathImpactFinder classes
  Similar in function to the old DependencyResolver and ImpactResolver classes, these new classes are easier to configure and use, and more flexible because they provide support for wildcards and file extensions in file paths. As the names suggest, the key feature of the new classes is the dependency search path, which is a simple formatted Java or Groovy string used to locate logical files on the local build zFS system.

// Create a dependency search path which searches '/u/build/repo' and sub-directories for files with a '.cpy' file extension 
String searchPath = "search:/u/build/repo?path=**/*.cpy"

For more information about creating a dependency search path as well as using the SearchPathDependencyResolver and SearchPathImpactFinder classes, see How to manage build dependencies.

Important notices

New features

• The DBB Web Application can now be installed into a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) cluster through an operator
  Red Hat® OpenShift® is an enterprise-ready Kubernetes container platform with full-stack automated operations to manage hybrid cloud and multicloud deployments. It is optimized to improve developer productivity and promote innovation. DBB v1.1.1 provides the DBB Web Application Server as a certified container package as well as a Container Application Software for Enterprises (CASE) bundle for deploying the DBB operator to an OpenShift Container Platform such as Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud. The DBB operator uses a DBB Server Custom Resource Definition to define and deploy the DBB Web Application Server container in OCP. For more information, see Defining and deploying a DBB server container and Installing the DBB Operator (CASE) bundle.

• Support for "report only" mode when running DBB z/OS command APIs
  IBM Dependency Based Build (DBB) provides APIs to create and generate a build report that contains summary information of the DBB z/OS commands executed during the build. Each z/OS command adds a build report record automatically to the build report when it is run. Beginning in DBB v1.1.1, you can turn on "report only" mode. This mode disables the actual execution of the z/OS command while allowing the automatic generation of the build report record to occur as if the command ran successfully. This allows for the creation of a build preview without having to run a real build. To turn on "report only" mode, add the DBB configuration property dbb.command.reportOnly and set the value to true. DBB z/OS commands that support "report only" mode are CreatePDS, CopyToHFS, CopyToPDS, MVSExec, ISPFExec, TSOExec, and JCLExec.

• The DBB source code scanner can now identify programs with IBM MQ call statements
  In addition to identifying build dependencies like COBOL COPYBOOKs and PL/I INCLUDE files in program source files, the default dependency scanner can also identify if a program contains EXEC CICS, EXEC SQL, or EXEC DLI statements. These statements are surfaced as flags (isCICS, isSQL, and isDLI) in the program logical file created by the scanner. This information is useful when determining whether additional compile options or DD statements are needed when building programs that contain these statements. Beginning in DBB v1.1.1, the scanner can also identify IBM MQ calls because like CICS, SQL and DLI programs, MQ programs also often require additional compile options, DD statements, or both. The new logical file flag is isMQ.

Important notices

<ssl id="defaultSSLConfig"
     sslProtocol="TLS"
     keyStoreRef="defaultKeyStore"/>

<ssl id="defaultSSLConfig" 
     sslProtocol="TLSv1.2"
     keyStoreRef="defaultKeyStore"/>

dbb.DependencyScanner.controlTransfers = true

New features

• DBB Web Application now available as a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) cluster
  Red Hat® OpenShift® is an enterprise-ready Kubernetes container platform with full-stack automated operations to manage hybrid cloud and multicloud deployments. It is optimized to improve developer productivity and promote innovation. DBB v1.1 provides the DBB Web Application Server as a container package as well as a Container Application Software for Enterprises (CASE) bundle for deploying the DBB container to an OpenShift Container Platform such as Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud. For more information on how to deploy the DBB Web Application on an OpenShift Container Platform, see Installing and configuring the DBB Container Packaging (CASE) bundle.

• Integration with z/OS Automated Unit Testing Framework (zUnit)
  IBM Developer for z/OS (IDz) v14.2.1 introduced the IBM z/OS Dynamic Test Runner for zUnit, which greatly increases the zUnit test capabilities provided by IDz including the capability to record and playback z/OS applications. This allows for the easy capture of test data and the ability to run zUnit tests in a batch environment with no middleware configured. DBB v1.1 provides the capability to execute zUnit tests as part of a CI/CD pipeline by providing a zUnit Test Configuration Dependency Scanner, which will automatically create dependency relationships between the z/OS source program, test program and playback data file. For more information, see Scanning zUnit test configuration file dependencies in How to manage build dependencies.

• Introducing new simplified Dependency Resolution and Impact Analysis APIs
  Build dependency resolution and impact analysis are key features of IBM Dependency Based Build. In previous releases, the ability to locate a program's referenced COBOL copybooks, PL/I include files and Assembler Macros in the Git source repository and automatically copy them to data sets prior to compiling the program has been supported by the DBB DependencyResolver class. Additionally, the capability to identify which programs need to be rebuilt due to a changed build dependency source file has been supported by the ImpactResolver class. Though powerful, these classes turned out to be difficult for users to understand and hard to configure. Therefore, DBB v1.1 introduces two alternative and much simpler methods as part of the LogicalFile class to perform both of these tasks. For more information, see How to manage build dependencies.