Testing applications on z/OS®

You can test applications on IBM® z/OS® systems by using the capabilities that are supported for mainframes by HCL DevOps Test Integrations and APIs (Test Integrations and APIs).

Test Integrations and APIs supports the following features when running on z/OS® 2.1 and 2.2:

  • CICS® Transaction Gateway recording, stubbing, and test execution.
  • CICS® Transaction Server Distributed Program Link (DPL) recording and stubbing.
  • CICS® IP interconnectivity (IPIC) recording and testing.
  • CICS® web services.
  • IMS™ Connect transport.
  • IMS™ Connect recording.
  • WebSphere® MQ queue manager message recording from either a single queue manager or from a queue sharing group.
  • IBM® z/OS® Connect Profile.
  • Sift-and-pass-through functionality. See Sift-and-pass-through capability

For more information about z/OS®, CICS®, and IMS™, refer to the IBM® z/OS® basic skills education knowledge center.

For information about recording requests from a non-z/OS® queue manager to a queue on a z/OS® queue manager and virtualizing replies from z/OS® to a queue on a non-z/OS® queue manager without installing the HRVMMQF exit, see Using WebSphere MQ transports on distributed platforms to test traffic to and from WebSphere MQ on z/OS.

Hardware requirements

The z/OS® features that are supported by Test Integrations and APIs do not require any special hardware.

For information about hardware requirements for Test Integrations and APIs, see System Requirements for DevOps Test Integrations and APIs 2024.03 (11.0.1)

For information about hardware requirements for z/OS®, refer to the IBM® z/OS® basic skills education knowledge center.

Software requirements

To use z/OS® features with Test Integrations and APIs, specific software is required.

The following software versions are supported:

  • IBM® WebSphere® MQ 8.0 or later.
  • CICS® Transaction Gateway 8.0, 8.1, 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2.
  • CICS® Transaction Server 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5 for IPIC and DPL.
  • IMS™ 12, 13, and 14 (includes IMS™ Connect) with the Java API included in Information Management System Enterprise Suite 2.1, 3.1, or 3.2.

You must have installed and configured z/OS®. For more information, refer to the IBM® z/OS® basic skills education knowledge center.

You must have installed and configured Test Integrations and APIs and HCL DevOps Test Virtualization Control Panel (Test Virtualization Control Panel).

The following table describes additional requirements to perform specific tests:

Test actions Install
Recording IMS™ Connect traffic by using the HTTP/TCP proxy HCL DevOps Test Virtualization Control Panel (Test Virtualization Control Panel)

HTTP/TCP proxies
Recording inbound or outbound IPIC communications to or from CICS® programs
Recording inbound or outbound web service calls to or from CICS® programs
Running tests and stubs on non-local systems Test Integrations and APIs Agent
You can refer to the following information about the tasks that you can perform:
Tasks More information

Setting up and using CICS® Transaction Gateway transports

Before creating CICS transports

Requirements for recording and virtualizing with CICS® Transaction Gateway

Requirements for CICS Transaction Gateway

Requirements for recording and virtualizing DPL calls in a CICS® Transaction Server

Recording and virtualizing DPL calls in CICS Transaction Server

Recording and testing IPIC communications to a CICS® Transaction Server

Configuring DevOps Test Integrations and APIs for recording and virtualizing IPIC traffic