COBOL DevOps: The Real Solution to Your Legacy Problem

Everyone knows that enterprises must be digitally super-agile to keep pace with innovative competitors and fulfill the ever-escalating demands of hyper-connected customers.

Everyone also knows that mainframe systems of record can be a major impediment to this essential agility. In fact, if you can’t quickly and frequently enhance your systems of record on the back end, your ability to deliver new value to customers via your digital/mobile front end will be fundamentally constrained.

But the solution to this problem isn’t the hideously expensive and risk-riddled “fool’s errand” of re-platforming applications, databases, and transaction processing systems that, in their current state, have proven to run magnificently.

The solution is to make COBOL DevOps as agile and efficient as DevOps everywhere else across the enterprise—and fully integrated therewith—without sacrificing an iota of the mainframe’s treasured stability and performance.

And, once again, that’s exactly what Compuware is supporting with today’s release of integrations and enhancements to Topaz for Total Test.

What We’re Releasing

First released just 180 days ago, Topaz for Total Test is the first fully automated unit testing solution for COBOL. By simplifying COBOL unit testing, Topaz for Total Test makes it easy for even developers with little hands-on mainframe experience to safely work on mainframe systems of record. The result: You can much more nimbly update your core mainframe applications in response to relentlessly changing business requirements born in digital ideas for better serving/engaging your customers. Newly released today are:

• Integration with Jenkins that enables you to automatically trigger COBOL unit testing as part of your broader cross-platform DevOps toolchain and/or continuous delivery processes.
• Integration with SonarSource’s SonarQube that gives you cross-platform visibility into quality trends throughout your DevOps pipeline.
• Integration with Compuware ISPW that tightly couples test cases with source code so you can share test assets, improve workflows and rigorously enforce your testing policies.
• New “stubbing” for DB2 that allows developers to run unit tests without an active DB2 connection. Data stubs are created automatically and don’t require re-compiling.

Why It’s Important

This release is important for several reasons:

1. A lack of automated unit testing is a primary obstacle to mainframe DevOps success. By simplifying unit testing in COBOL development, Compuware Topaz for Total Test helps you bring DevOps and Agile culture to the mainframe—while also facilitating integration of mainframe dev/test with your broader digital initiatives and relieving your dependency on the tribal knowledge of long-term COBOL developers who could retire any day with the shock and horror of a two-week notice.
2. For mainframe customers with outsourced development, Topaz for Total Test can ensure essential and disciplined unit testing is getting done even in the case of a physically remote and a highly transient development workforce.
3. In tandem with Compuware’s overall portfolio of tools, integrations, partnerships, and services, Topaz for Total Test supports your efforts to keep getting maximum business value out of your mainframe investments for decades to come—especially since those investments deliver unmatched reliability, performance, scalability, security and ownership economics.
4. As the 11^th consecutive quarterly announcement of a high-value mainframe innovation, these Topaz for Total Test enhancements and integrations demonstrate once again that Compuware is relentlessly delivering on our roadmap with concrete solutions—not just hype.

The bottom line: If your business depends on COBOL applications, invest in Topaz for Total Test. And investigate the entire Compuware portfolio. It’s not an exaggeration to say that your company’s future may depend on it.