Query for article on testing mainframe systems, applications, networks
This is for website/magazine I'd not seen before: https://increment.com/ It's described: Increment is a print and digital magazine about how teams build and operate software systems at scale. It has an interesting approach, devoting issues to topic themes such as internationalization, security, documentation, programming languages, etc. My article is for an issue on testing. --- Modern systems -- especially mainframes and everything connected to them -- require modern testing tools and procedures. The days are gone when it was sufficient to SYSGEN, IPL, (maybe) run a few test batch jobs or interactive scripts, and wait for user feedback. (The old joke, of course, was that users existed to test system programmers' system programs.) Testing is often misunderstood and neglected when it should be a combination of creative art and rigorous engineering. In these days of distributed, mixed-platform, and cloud-hosted applications, potentially targeting millions of users, developers casually testing their own code is also folly. Comprehensive test suites and cumulative regression tests are essential tools for preventing everything from ugly interfaces to catastrophic visible failures. How widely used - and effective -- are techniques such as continuous integration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration -- the practice of merging all developer working copies to a shared mainline several times a day) and DevOps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps -- a set of software development practices that combines software development and information technology operations)? Do testing practices differ for GUI-developed applications? Or GUI apps themselves -- same as for complex spreadsheets -- is the second "G" in GIGO "gospel" or "garbage"? So -- what are current best practices for testing mainframe (z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE, Linux) technology? This covers everything from applying one PTF to installing a new operating system release/version, and from verifying batch/TSO operation to validating end-to-end transaction processing across networks and multiple servers. Besides testing system updates and local applications, how do you test IBM program products and ISV products? ISVs -- how do YOU test products across supported environments? While the article isn't explicitly about tuning or performance, surely those are critical assessments too when making changes. And, to keep this topic manageable, it does NOT include debugging when tests fail. As usual, please copy replies to me directly to avoid them being buried in list digests. Thanks. -- Gabriel Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, Inc. g...@gabegold.com 3401 Silver Maple Place, Falls Church, VA 22042 (703) 204-0433 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gabegold Twitter: GabeG0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
