Why Generating Unit Test Cases is Important In 1996, the Ariane 5 rocket exploded just 37 seconds after launch. The cause? A single line of unhandled code that wasn’t properly tested. Cost: $440 million and years of work, gone in an instant. Your COBOL programs might not launch rockets, but they do something just as…
Details
Zum ersten Mal durften wir in diesem Jahr an der TechXchange teilnehmen und es war ein großartiges Erlebnis.Als Teil des IBM Champions Programms hatten wir nicht nur die Gelegenheit, spannende Sessions zu besuchen, sondern auch selbst aktiv mitzuwirken. David hielt einen Vortrag zum Thema COBOL Meets Gradle. Das Thema stieß auf großes Interesse, der Raum…
Details
Those who read my earlier blog article on accessing CICS programs via Liberty from WebServices, remember that I was announcing this article. So, let’s dive into it. Integrating COBOL batch programs with modern Java applications running in CICS is a common requirement in enterprise mainframe environments. The External Call Interface (EXCI) provides the bridge, allowing…
Details
Introduction In IBM CICS, the integrated WebSphere Liberty profile provides a modern, lightweight runtime for Java applications.If your goal is to expose CICS business logic through SOAP without modifying existing programs, a clean approach is to wrap only those programs that can be called via EXEC CICS LINK from Java. With this method, the Liberty…
Details
This page explains how to enhance Aider for mainframe development by integrating COBOL parsing and analysis. What is Aider ? Aider is an open-source (Apache-2.0 license) coding assistant that you use directly from your terminal. It connects with both licensed and open-source large language models (llm) to help you write, edit, and improve your code.…
Details
Thomas, welcome to Living Mainframe! You started with us on 1 July – what made you take this step? Thank you, Yvonne! Living Mainframe stands for a vision that I absolutely share: ensuring the future viability of critical IT infrastructures. After more than three decades in a wide variety of IT environments, it was clear…
Details
When developing Java applications on z/OS, it’s common to deal with EBCDIC-encoded input and output files. These files are read, processed, and written by Java programs that run directly on the mainframe. In such environments, even small changes in Java’s platform behavior can have significant effects. This blog post highlights a critical and easily overlooked…
Details
We are pleased to welcome Sachin Keshav as a new team member. Let’s Start from the Beginning, Sachin—Tell Us About Yourself and How You Joined Living Mainframe. My journey into tech began the day our first family computer arrived in the early 2000s. What looked like a bulky, humming box to most felt like…
Details
Interestingly, Gradle found two tasks, even though we only ran one. Let’s ask Gradle about it by showing us the task dependencies:
COBOL has long been the backbone of many legacy mainframe systems, but modern software development practices – like automated testing and continuous integration – are reshaping how we maintain and enhance these critical systems. Enter COBOL Check, an open-source unit testing framework designed specifically for COBOL by the Open Mainframe Project. This blog post explores…
Details