Modernization starts with discovery. Why? With tens of millions of lines of code, hundreds of dependencies, and dated documentation, architects and developers can spend weeks or months trying to understand the impact of changes, with no guarantee the updates won’t have unintended, rippling effects. Using an enterprise class discovery tool like IBM Application Discovery and Delivery Intelligence (ADDI), you can perform a deep dive analysis of application boundaries and interdependencies as well as resources, databases, variables and more. ADDI provides up-to-date, consumable information about your mainframe software assets and resources, allowing you to confidently plan your changes.

To learn more, see Discover and plan for z/OS hybrid applications.

Developers want a cloud-native experience when creating or updating z/OS applications, including COBOL, PL/I, High-Level Assembler (HLASM), Java, C/C++, and REXX programs. With IBM solutions, essential developer capabilities such as edit, build, and debug are available across different IDE options and can be run on-prem or on a public cloud. Developers also get interactive access to z/OS systems and integration with modern SCMs such as Git.

IDE options are available to you based on where you want to code.

Developing z/OS applications on-prem

For developing z/OS applications on-prem, choose from:

• Microsoft® VS Code, available in IDzEE and Z and Cloud Mod Stack
• Red Hat® OpenShift® Dev Spaces, available in IDzEE and Z and Cloud Mod Stack
• Eclipse, available in IBM Developer for z/OS (IDz) and IBM Developer for z/OS Enterprise Edition (IDzEE).

Developing z/OS applications on a hybrid cloud

For developing z/OS applications on a hybrid cloud (IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, AWS) using a browser, IBM offers a cloud-native experience using Microsoft VS Code in Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces (available in IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack and IDzEE).

For additional guidance on selecting the IDE that is right for you, see Choosing an IDE client.

After making changes to your code, it’s important to ensure dependencies are addressed. Using IBM Wazi Analyze, developers can quickly discover the relationships among z/OS application artifacts and understand the impact of changes they want to make. IBM Wazi Analyze is designed for the developer to perform a rapid, graphical analysis on your local branch of code.

Working on prem and prefer Eclipse? See Developing z/OS applications with Eclipse.

Working on prem and prefer VS Code?

• IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack customers see Developing with IBM Wazi for VS Code.
• IDzEE customers see Developing with IBM Wazi for VS Code.

Working on a hybrid cloud using a browser and prefer OpenShift-based VS Code with analyze capabilities? See Developing with IBM Wazi for Dev Spaces.

An integrated pipeline is the backbone of the value stream. To unleash productivity, IBM empowers teams to use a single pipeline to orchestrate the development, integration and deployment of an application across multiple target platforms and environments.

Open source tools like Git, Jenkins and Artifactory are becoming de facto standards for powering CI/CD in the enterprise. A single, modern SCM, like Git, can break down silos, providing a single repository for everything that belongs to an application: source code, tests and configurations. Having git as SCM and CI/CD workflows associated with git enables teams to automate build and deploy of auditable configurations.

• Understand application boundaries to create Git repos at the application level.
• Determine the right Git workflow for your teams.
• Integrate your build process into your enterprise-standard CI pipeline with the quality gates configured to deliver the most secure, high quality software quickly.

1. Install IBM Dependency Based Build (DBB).
2. Customize zAppBuild.
3. Create a CI/CD pipleline.

For help setting up a CI/CD pipeline or adding DBB your existing one, request help from your sales rep to reach out to our DevOps Acceleration Team.

Organizations worldwide are embracing DevOps to transform their end-end development processes, establishing a highly automated pipeline. Automation isn't enough. Investment in good application-specific test tools is required, as well, to enable best practices like shift-left testing, where unit and application integration testing occur earlier in the pipeline process, allowing problems to be discovered sooner.

Automated, shift-left testing can help accelerate delivery of higher quality Z-powered, hybrid applications. Enterprises can benefit significantly from reduced risk and costs, and confidently deliver to production faster whether providing new capabilities or hot fixes to those mission-critical applications.

IBM solutions ranging from unit testing to early integration testing and easy provisioning of test environments, along with open source testing frameworks, work together to extend the continuous integration process.

To learn more, see Automating and shift-left testing z/OS hybrid applications.

1. Understand the phase of automated testing that would benefit your organization the most (unit, integration, regression, and so on).
2. Gather the team needed to implement automated, shift-left testing (developers, testers, and systems administrators).
3. Create a project plan for implementation with dates and responsible parties identified.

When adopting Git as the single source of truth across the enterprise, teams want to increase the pace of application deployments into test and production environments and need tooling to make this possible. IBM Wazi Deploy is a scripted deployment tool that drives z/OS application deployment leveraging Python and Ansible® and can easily be integrated into a CI/CD pipeline via a command line interface.

A typical deployment begins after the successful build of the various components of an application using a tool like IBM Dependency Based Build (DBB). The output of the build is packaged and deployed into a target environment. IBM Wazi Deploy allows a DevOps engineer to declaratively define a set of deployment templates, known as deployment methods, that describe the steps to deploy the various artifact types that make up the z/OS application. Based on the contents of the package, it retrieves the appropriate deployment methods to generate a deployment plan that carries out the deployment into a target z/OS environment. IBM Wazi Deploy provides a set of default deployment methods for both Python and Ansible that can be customized.

To learn more, see a diagram that describes the IBM Wazi Deploy workflow.

With the Python option, the deployment steps run on z/OS. If the application is being deployed using Ansible, IBM Wazi Deploy generates and executes the deployment plan in a Linux environment and then deploys the application to the target z/OS environment using Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z.

To learn more, see Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z.

For those using a traditional SCM, to learn more about how UrbanCode Deploy can be used to deploy into your test or production environments, see z/OS considerations for UrbanCode Deploy.