August 2024
To: Brightside/Test4z Customers
From: Broadcom's Test4z Product Team
Subject: General Availability Announcement for Test4z 1.1
On behalf of Broadcom, we appreciate your business and the opportunity to provide you with high-quality, innovative software and services. As part of our ongoing commitment to customer success, we regularly release updated versions of our products. Today, we are pleased to announce that Test4z 1.1 is now available.
Unit testing is the foundation of the quality process – get it right and quality code results; get it wrong and the process fails. Test4z enables teams to "get it right" by using well-known best practices like code coverage at the true unit level (e.g., COBOL paragraphs) while easily reusing and maintaining the tests. Simple for developers to understand and use, including with VS Code, Test4z requires no additional tooling.
Help reduce your overall development costs and increase confidence in code changes by building quality into your process with Test4z.
The Test4z provides the capabilities for unit testing, regression testing, and code coverage metrics. In addition, it provides the capability to record program execution. The recording feature aims to speed up unit test creation and automate regression testing under replay.
New Test4z 1.1 features and enhancements include:
Enhanced Runtime Environment:
· New Test Harness to create and manage all mocks for a test suite
· New Dynamic Recording Proxy to allow recording in unusual or difficult software
· ZLNEXT DD to generate new JSON recording during unit testing
· Auto-detection of LPA or protected programs, resulting in created proxy for the programs
· Automatic creation of ZLDETUPD output to update ZLDETAIL members with argument lengths
· Code page support
· Code coverage for Branch conditions
· VS COBOL II support
· ARGLENGTH enhancements without DWARF data
Enhanced CLI Function and Options:
· DD option for allocation of data sets used by programs under test
· Recording data during unit testing using ZLNEXT
· Code page support
· Code coverage for Branch conditions
· Timeout for test execution
· Support for non-SMS volumes and configurable allocation options
· Usage of Db2 coprocessor in COBOL compiler to compile Db2 samples for code coverage
· Verification of required space on file system during init processing
· SSH (secure shell) debug option --syncz-verbose available during init, test, and deploy-runtime
Improved Samples, VS Code Snippets, APIs, and API Documentation:
· New and updated sample programs covering more testing scenarios and APIs
· VS Code snippets available for all APIs
· Expanded API usage documentation
· API flow table that lists any requirements for when the API can be called and any prerequisite APIs
· API-to-Sample cross-reference to quickly find a sample program that uses a particular API
· New APIs include: _WatchVariable, _GetArguments, _CreateHarness, _GetProgramObject, _GetFileObject, _GetDb2Object, _GetRowsetObject, _PrintRowset, _AddRecord, _AddRowset, _GetProgramArgument, _GetDb2Argument, _GetKSDSArgument, _GetESDSArgument, _GetRRDSArgument, _GetQSAMArgument, _DeregisterSpy, _SpyVariable, and _DisplayProgram
In addition to features mentioned above, the release contains a Technical Preview of CICS unit testing capabilities. Information on CICS is provided as a Technical Preview intended for evaluation purposes only and is not yet suitable for production use. The information may undergo changes during the preview phase. Please contact the Test4z product manager Petr.Vacula@broadcom.com if you would like to review the CICS unit testing capabilities.
CICS Technical Preview:
· Unit test capabilities for CICS
· CICS Technical Preview APIs include: _DispatchCICS, _MockCICS, _MockCICSStatement, _AddTDQRecord, _AddTSQRecord, _AddContainerRecord, _GetCICSArgument, _SpyCICS, _AssertNoErrorsCICS, and _DisplayCICS
We also encourage you to visit the Test4z product information page.
You can download your copy of Test4z online at Support where you can also utilize the case management system. To install your product, follow the installation procedures at Tech Doc. If you have any questions or require assistance, contact Support.
Should you need any assistance in understanding these new features, or implementing this latest release, contact your Mainframe Business Specialist who will connect you with Broadcom's Mainframe subject matter experts or reach out directly to the Product Manager at petr.vacula@broadcom.com. To connect, learn, and share with other customers, join and participate in our Brightside Community.
For a list of Mainframe Education courses recommended by role, please visit the Learning Paths and select the desired product. We update courses based on functional impact as well as high demand; therefore, courses created from previous releases may apply to the current release.
Please review our End of Service / End of Life Policy at Broadcom Maintenance Policy Handbook.
Thank you again for your business.