Blogs

Broadcom Service Virtualization – Helping Dev Teams Test Mainframe and Distributed Systems Faster and Safer By Uttam Anand Mainframe application testing is essential to ensure the reliability, performance, and security of systems that support critical business functions across sectors such as banking, healthcare, insurance, and travel. These systems process large volumes of transactions and sensitive data, making rigorous testing vital to prevent downtime, data breaches, and system failures. Given their complexity and integration with both legacy and modern technologies, thorough testing is necessary to verify that updates, migrations, or new features ...

Last summer, I worked on the Zowe Python SDK project with the Zowe team under the Open Mainframe Project at Broadcom’s Pittsburgh office. This summer, I rejoined the team to contribute further on a different project. Arriving in May, I felt a mix of excitement and anticipation—eager to build on my prior experience and dive once again into the world of mainframe development. Just like last time, the team’s warm welcome and collaborative spirit set the tone for an engaging and intensive 12 week journey. What I Focused On My work this summer centered on Zowe Native Proto, an open-source, SSH-based protocol designed to expose z/OS operations with minimal ...

Hi, I’m Jeff Wong—a computer engineering graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After an incredible summer with the z/Raiders team last year, this marks my second time working as a Next-Gen Mainframer—again under Broadcom’s MSD Data Management Team. This summer, I joined the Pioneers, a team focused on making database administration on the mainframe seamless. My role? Use modern tools to accelerate that mission by a factor of ten. Project Overview My project focused on developing and integrating automated tests for RC/Compare for Db2 for z/OS, a Broadcom tool that runs under ISPF (Interactive System Productivity Facility). ...

This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to join the Datacom team at Broadcom and work on a unique challenge: transitioning an existing assembly program to Metal C. While I had prior experience with C, C++, and some exposure to assembly in university, this was my first time diving into mainframe programming. The experience pushed me out of my comfort zone—and ended up being one of the most rewarding projects of my career so far. Background: What Is Metal C? IBM Metal C is a variant of the C programming language designed for low-level, system-level development on mainframes. It behaves like traditional C but allows direct manipulation of hardware via ...

The Mission: Simplifying Mainframe Security This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to work at the Lisle office as a Next-Gen Mainframer in UX Research. Building on an academic foundation in Cognitive Science focusing on Psychology/HCI and AI from UT Dallas and prior UX research experiences in distributed environments, I was eager to dive into the unique challenges and immense potential of the mainframe world. From day one, the warm welcome and collaborative spirit of the Broadcom team, including UX colleagues, set the stage for an immersive and impactful twelve-week journey. The mission this summer? To contribute to making the mainframe experience ...

As a Next-Gen Mainframer, I’ve always realized the importance of Quality Assurance (QA) as an integral part of any development process. The phrase “Customers don’t want to be treated as QA” couldn’t be more impactful and imperative; however, developers are human, after all, and they can sometimes overlook steps within this crucial task. In any product, especially a complex one, developers cannot plan for every possible issue that may arise after its release. The obvious answer to this problem involves thorough testing, but this answer raises another question: how comprehensive should this testing be? With time spent in the testing phase as the investment, ...

The Role of Encryption in Secure Communication One of the foundational principles of data security is encryption. Using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), two parties can establish a trust relationship that ensures the confidentiality and integrity of shared information. For example, if I encrypt data using your public key, only you can decrypt it using your private key—ensuring confidentiality and non-repudiation. This process not only ensures that the data remains inaccessible to unauthorized parties but also guarantees its authenticity. Without encryption, sensitive information transmitted across networks becomes vulnerable to interception and exploitation. ...

DevOps Enhancements: My Summer on Broadcom’s NetMaster Team This summer at Broadcom, I had the opportunity to join the NetMaster team—a group responsible for a powerful network monitoring tool that tracks mainframe connections. Heading into the summer-long role, I wasn’t sure what to expect, as the NetMaster team works on a wide variety of projects. I was excited to dive in, learn new skills and technologies, and contribute wherever I could. Vault as a Service: Secure Credential Management in Jenkins My first project involved integrating all of NetMaster’s Jenkins pipelines with Vault, a secure tool for storing credentials. Instead ...

Greenplum Database, built on PostgreSQL and designed for massively parallel data processing, powers analytics at scale. As with any large-scale distributed system, operability — the ability to observe, manage, and troubleshoot the system — is critical for long-term maintainability, ensuring uptime, and keeping the system healthy. To streamline operational workflows, Greenplum introduces a Task Scheduler — a lightweight, internal framework designed to run service-oriented tasks at scheduled intervals. Use cases range from scheduled execution of recurring tasks—such as running utilities like gprecoverseg to recover or rebalance segments, or performing ...

Revolutionizing TDM Synthetic Data Generation: Introducing Data Assistant Plus Authored by Uttam Anand, Customer Engagement Engineer at Broadcom Synthetic Data Generation Synthetic data is fabricated but realistic data created using rules, algorithms, or models to mimic the structure and characteristics of real-world data, without containing any actual sensitive or Personal information (PII Data). Synthetic data generation in Test Data Management (TDM) works by creating structured, rule-based test data that mimics the shape and logic of real production data, without containing any actual user or business information. The process begins ...

In the world of containerized applications, selecting the right base image is crucial for performance, security, and resource management. While upstream Java images serve their purposes, there are specific use cases where a Bitnami Secure Image Java Minimal image can offer significant advantages. Let’s explore when opting for a minimal image is the optimal choice. What is a Bitnami Secure Image Java Minimal Image? A Bitnami Secure Image Java Minimal image is a streamlined container image designed to include only the essential components required to run a Java application. This stripped-down approach eliminates unnecessary libraries, tools, and dependencies, ...

On behalf of CA Technologies, a Broadcom Company, we are pleased to notify you that rollups for July, 2025 is now available. The following rollups have been published: Rollups: · CA - Patch Me - Security IntelliRollup v2507.00 · CA - Microsoft OS Extended Support Update - IntelliRollup v2507.00 · CA - Office 32Bit - Security IntelliRollup v2507.00 · CA - Office 64Bit - Security IntelliRollup v2507.00 These items will be available for acceptance in your Patch Manager GUI after the next successful run of the “Software Contents Download Job”. Note: Microsoft announced support ...

On behalf of CA Technologies, a Broadcom Company, we are pleased to notify you that individual patches for July, 2025 is now available. The following Individual patches have been published: · 2025-07 Security Monthly Quality Rollup - Windows8-RT-kb5062592-x64 · 2025-07 Cumulative Update - Windows8-RT-kb5062558-x64 · 2025-07 Security Monthly Quality Rollup - Windows8.1-kb5062597-x64 · 2025-07 Cumulative Update for IE11 - Windows8.1-kb5062558-x64 · 2025-07 Security Only Update - windows6.0-kb5062618-x86 · 2025-07 Security Monthly Quality Rollup - windows6.0-kb5062624-x86 ...