Testing applications on z/OS®

You can test applications on IBM® z/OS® systems by using the capabilities that are supported for mainframes by Rational® Integration Tester. Rational® Integration Tester is installed as part of the IBM® Rational® Test Workbench product offering.

Rational® Integration Tester 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 Rational® Integration Tester do not require any special hardware.

For information about hardware requirements for Rational® Integration Tester, see System Requirements

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 Rational® Integration Tester, 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 Rational® Integration Tester and IBM® Rational® Test 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 IBM® Rational® Test 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 Rational® Integration Tester 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 Rational Integration Tester for recording and virtualizing IPIC traffic