These new integrations and enhancements to the product build upon previous Compuware solution integrations with Jenkins and SonarQube, and validate the company’s commitment to mainstream the mainframe in support of enterprise DevOps.
Topaz for Total Test enables enterprises to more nimbly, easily and efficiently update their core mainframe applications in response to ever-changing business requirements. They also enable enterprise IT to better orchestrate changes to mainframe systems of record with changes to systems of engagement—a significant benefit given the fact that customer-facing digital services often rely on code running across multiple platforms.
Significant enhancements include:
- Topaz for Total Test integration with Jenkins enables COBOL unit testing to be automatically triggered as part of a DevOps toolchain and/or continuous delivery process for increased DevOps efficiency.
- Topaz for Total Test integration with SonarSource’s SonarQube ensures quality trends are visible throughout the development process by displaying pass/fail testing results along with all cross-platform DevOps activities.
- Topaz for Total Test integration with Compuware ISPW tightly couples test cases with source code to enable the sharing of test assets, enhanced workflow and the enforcement of testing policies as part of the DevOps toolchain.
- New “stubbing” for DB2 databases allows developers to run unit tests without requiring an active connection to a live DB2 database. While Topaz for Total Test can be used to test code that processes all types of mainframe data, its unique stubbing capability—for DB2, VSAM and QSAM data types—makes it far easier to create repeatable tests. Data stubs are created automatically and do not require re-compiling.
Enterprises adopting Topaz for Total Test—along with Compuware’s other innovative mainframe solutions—can thus achieve unprecedented digital agility while dramatically reducing dependency on the specialized knowledge of mainframe veterans aging out of the active IT workforce.
“Given the abject failure of re-platforming initiatives, large enterprises hoping to avoid digital irrelevance must aggressively modernize their mainframe DevOps practices,” said Rich Ptak of IT analyst firm Ptak Associates. “Key to the modernization and ‘de-legacing’ of mainframe applications is the adoption of unit testing for COBOL code that is equivalent to and well-integrated with unit testing as practiced across the rest of the enterprise codebase.”
Topaz for Total Test is already transforming COBOL development and testing processes at some of the world’s largest enterprises.
“As a hybrid IT service provider, Ensono continually strives to improve quality,” said Ken Harper, Director, Product and Technology for Ensono. “Topaz is helping us be more efficient and remove friction when supporting our mainframe clients by providing visibility into complex mainframe code and the relationships between layers of data.”
Many enterprises—among them the world’s largest banks, insurance companies, retailers and airlines—run their business on mainframe applications. Unfortunately, the ability of enterprises to update those applications to reflect their ever-changing business imperatives is badly hampered by manual, antiquated development and testing processes; ongoing loss of specialized COBOL programming knowledge; and the risk of introducing even the slightest defect into core mainframe systems of record.
Compuware Topaz for Total Test transforms mainframe application development by automatically breaking COBOL code down into units and creating tests for those logical units. Developers at all skill levels can thus quickly and easily perform unit testing on COBOL code just as they do in Java, PHP and other popular programming languages. In fact, Topaz is actually more advanced than typical Java tools, because it requires no coding and automatically generates default unit test result assertions for developers.
With the integrations and enhancements released today, Compuware has now delivered mainframe innovations for eleven consecutive quarters. This groundbreaking accomplishment is unheard of in the mainframe software market and one that reflects Compuware’s relentless commitment to improving innovation throughput and quality using Agile and DevOps methods.
“Large enterprises are waking up to the fact that outdated mainframe tools and waterfall-bound practices are an existential threat to their business,” said Compuware CEO Chris O’Malley. “Compuware is responding to this awakening with solutions, services, acquisitions and partnerships that enable these large enterprises to reap the special advantages of being both superior in size and agility.”
