Application development is becoming increasingly hybrid and complex, making accelerated delivery an essential business requirement. To deliver rapidly with high quality, practitioners use continuous testing practices to shift testing left, automate and improve quality to minimize risk.
Recent Gartner insights on Automated Software Testing Adoption and Trends (link resides outside ibm.com) reveal a growing “readiness to use advanced automation testing as DevOps and agile methodologies to propel growth. Even with these modern approaches, testing remains a significant challenge and CIOs are demanding agile testing practices for z/OS® applications to fuel rapid delivery of high quality.” That’s why embracing automated testing has become a top priority for software development teams looking to streamline their processes, improve quality, and accelerate delivery.
To meet our clients’ evolving needs, we are thrilled to introduce IBM Test Accelerator for Z, a groundbreaking solution designed to revolutionize testing on IBM Z®. This innovative tool expedites the shift-left approach, fostering smooth collaboration between z/OS developers and testers through a unified experience.
Tailored for IBM Z customers seeking enhanced agility, accelerated delivery timelines, and superior software quality, IBM Test Accelerator for Z empowers developers and testers alike. It is designed to facilitate automated unit testing, early integration testing and comprehensive integration testing, seamlessly incorporating generated tests into automated builds as part of a continuous testing framework.
Developed in collaboration with IBM Research®, this tool includes the ability to automatically generate test data for challenging program paths, thus significantly boosting code coverage and accelerating testing processes.
Setting it apart from conventional testing solutions, IBM Test Accelerator for Z grants users and teams the freedom to swiftly create isolated, non-production virtual environments hosting IBM z/OS software and middleware on-premises using Linux® on Z. This streamlined approach facilitates early defect detection, thereby minimizing delivery timelines, cutting costs and mitigating risks. These versatile features are designed to empower teams to embrace agile methodologies, shift-left testing and continuous integration practices within an automated pipeline.
IBM Test Accelerator for Z provides an intuitive user experience for developers and testers to generate automated unit tests, and early integration tests through Eclipse® plugged into IBM Developer for z/OS (IDz) and powered by the IBM Dynamic Test Engine for z/OS.
The automation of the unit testing for z/OS developers covers online transactions and batch programs, Customer Information Control System (CICS) Transaction Server and Information Management Systems (IMS) programs without the need for application artifacts to be deployed in the target environments.
Developers can perform early integration testing by recording a test from a transaction or batch program and execute the test without needing deployment to the target environments. Developers and testers can record and then create deployable and reusable Galasa-based integration tests.
Businesses can execute tests on an isolated, customizable z/OS virtual environment of their choice, fit-for-purpose based on enterprise considerations for cost, availability, performance or security. These tests can run on either Linux on IBM Z environments or x86-compatible systems, enabling verification of the specific change without unexpected impacts due to a shared environment.
We thank our sponsor users for co-creating this “one-stop-shop” for z/OS testing with us. If you are eager to start your journey, read the announcement or click the product page link for more information.
We’re confident that you share our vision of simplifying complex software delivery tasks in this hybrid world. The barriers to rapid delivery are coming down, and now you have the key to start your engine.
Explore the product page to learn more.
Register (link resides outside ibm.com) for the “Future of test automation for Z hybrid applications” webinar on 25 June 2024.