Solution overview

IBM Wazi Developer for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces (IBM Wazi Developer) is a single integrated solution, which delivers a cloud native development experience for z/OS. It enables application developers to develop and test z/OS application components in a virtual z/OS environment on an OpenShift-powered hybrid multicloud platform, and to use an industry standard integrated development environment (IDE) of their choice.

IBM Wazi Developer provides the following key components:
  • Wazi Sandbox: Enables you to self provision z/OS runtimes and databases and provides a fully virtual z/OS environment that enables development and testing of z/OS applications on OpenShift running on x86_64 hardware. See more.
  • Wazi Code: Offers essential mainframe development capabilities including edit, build, and debug mainframe applications. It provides 3 IDEs for your choice: IBM Wazi Developer for Workspaces, IBM Wazi Developer for VS Code, and IBM Wazi Developer for Eclipse. See more.
  • Wazi Analyze: Offers a containerized component that creates rapid, graphical analysis in an installation-free and configuration-free web UI. With the Analyze component, developers can discover the relationships among their z/OS application artifacts and quickly understand the impact of the changes that they want to make. See more.
In addition to the components above, you can also use the pipeline capability to define the whole application lifecycle by automating the work flow, from the building stage to the provisioning and deploying stages. For more information about the pipeline capability, see Creating a CI/CD pipeline for z/OS applications.

Benefits

This solution can be integrated into existing development practices and facilitates the transition to the latest development practices and frameworks like SAFe, Agile, Lean, and DevOps. It provides the following benefits:

  • Bridges the gap between the developer experience on distributed and mainframe platform during development of hybrid applications that contain z/OS application components.
  • Delivers cloud native development experience for z/OS that is portable across any cloud or platform and optimized to run on OpenShift.
  • Allows developers to develop and test z/OS applications by using a personal sandbox environment on OpenShift.
  • Helps developers unfamiliar with z/OS and IBM Z® get up to speed quickly and become productive in developing and delivering applications.
  • Supports edit, build, and debug via an industry standard IDE such as VS Code or Eclipse that integrates with a standard, open tool chain via a modern SCM, for example, Git.
  • Helps developers rapidly assess the impact of the changes that they want to make as often as needed.
  • Rebalances entitlement over time flexibly based on your business needs.
  • Automates pipeline delivery with modern tools and standard processes across platforms.
  • Streamlines the building and deployment of z/OS applications through a CI/CD pipeline.