Summary

New capability names!

New capability with COBOL Unit Testing with the addition of the Early Development Testing extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code)!

New features across the product!

Welcome to IBM Test Accelerator for Z 2.0.0! 

What’s in a Name? 

We did some renames to keep my word count down - so I am going to talk about it here to get the count back up.

With IBM Test Accelerator for Z 2.0.0, we optioned to adjust the product capability names to be more conducive to simpler communication.

The product name has ‘for Z’, so there no need to have z/OS on each product.

Now we have Early Development Testing, Functional Testing, and On-Demand Environments in IBM Test Accelerator for Z 2.0.

An Ode to On-Demand Environments

Just kidding! I am not a poet, but there are updates to On-Demand Environments in Test Accelerator for Z 2.0.0.

On Demand Dev and Test Environments for z/OS has become On-Demand Environments which is much easier to say.

On-Demand Environments now has both new role-based access control (RBAC) interface, for artifacts created within the On-Demand Environments tooling interface, as well as a new z/OS instance controller.

Early Development Testing on Eclipse 

Early Development Testing for z/OS is now just Early Development Testing.

What was referred to as Early Integration Testing is now called Component Testing, to keep it simple. 

Early Development Testing on Eclipse also gotten a new trick, in having a unique IMS Isolation support capability. Read more here.

• With the host Dynamic Test Engine configured for IMS Isolation, an IMS Isolation profile can isolate IMB sessions from other users by using a private IMS region.
• For example, you can use an IMS Isolation Profile to isolate a recording session  with the Dynamic Test Engine in a private region to assure there are no other activities going on from other users and affecting your data and program behaviors.

Note that IBM Developer for z/OS 17.0.2 and later is required.

New! Early Development Testing extension for VS Code

IBM Test Accelerator for Z 2.0.0 Early Development Testing change log 1.0.0 - 2025/08/22

• First release of the Early Development Testing extension for VS Code

• Early Development Testing: Unit Testing as a totally new testing experience, as an extension for VS Code!

• The new experience starts in VS Code, the same as Functional Test.

• The same dependency list too with all the favorites: IBM Z Open Editor, Zowe Explorer, and IBM Z Open Debug. We recommend Red Hat YAML extension as well.

• Pull down your code, set up your ZAPP file and Zowe Profile, and you are ready!

• This release of the extension lets a user collect program data via recording with the Dynamic Test Engine.

• You can click record directly from the COBOL source file … just select the profile you want and go!

• A user can create unit tests for a program using recorded program data.

• Once recorded, right click the source file in the Project Explorer view but this time choose Create Unit Test. The unit test files are now in your view.

• A user can view a list of program test points and see which data used to execute a specific test point. Each test point can be enabled or disabled for assertion during the test run in the Dynamic Test Engine.

• A departure from the Early Developer Testing for Eclipse experience here to note: the .ztest is a YAML file! Easy to read, easy to adjust.

• A user can open the Data Editor view by clicking on a test point. The Data Editor view allows a user to modify assertions or mock data in the unit test.

• Need to change something? Use go to source, or explore the Test Points to alter the test data, then just run again!

• A user can run unit tests with the Dynamic Test Engine and see test run results in VS Code's Test Output view.

• Test Explorer View to run the test, see results, and to delve and change use the Test Points view.

Create code, create tests, run and get results all in one interface!

Functional Testing extension for VS Code

IBM Test Accelerator for Z 2.0.0 Functional Testing change log 1.0.0 - 2025/08/22

• Renamed extension from Integration Test Builder for z/OS to IBM TAZ Functional Testing

• We changed the name to focus in on the type of z/OS Integration tests that we are building in the tooling.

• Additional Information Management System (IMS) Transaction Manager (TM) support including Message Format Service (MFS) support

• From a middleware perspective, Functional Testing has expanded the support of IMS and now supports augmenting the recording with MFS files at Test writing time to give better automatic tests.

• Added initial IMS Database (DB) support

• IBM Enterprise Edition for Galasa provides the enhanced Galasa Experience.

• Updated recording UI with V3 recording support

• The Recording UI now has the same look and feel and experience as the new Early Development Testing extension for VS Code. Still activated from the VS Code Command Palette.

• Enhanced recording experience with Z Application (ZAPP) file support

• In addition, we made some changes and now support using zapp profiles and the Zowe config, and also shifted dependencies to Z Open Debug for a united experience with Early Development Testing extension for VS Code; you’ll likely want Red Hat Java and YAML extensions and Microsoft Debugger for Java, Test Runner for Java, Maven for Java, and Project Manager for Java.

• Use the ZAPP Profile in the standardized zapp.yaml instead of the earlier separately managed itbz-config.yaml

• Ability to perform maven build and execute Galasa test from VS code UI

• We also have has added an improved user experience utilizing VS Code Test Explorer; Functional Testing can now build the Maven tests, run the Galasa test, and report results within the Test Views, showing pass and fail, while still retaining the VS Code Terminal data.

• Yes, you can run directly from the Java file in the Project Explorer View too!

• Added support for user to specify up to one code page to be used while interpreting screen data when generating Galasa test

• Code Page adaptation support.

Check out the ZAPP YAML capability, and why we moved: as a YAML, it is highly typed and structured, and easy to manage. You can scope the transactions, programs, and what you want to have Functional Testing generate for your tests all done easily with ZAPP profiles.

And now, run the Galasa tests quickly.

And see not run, pass, fail, error, and still running tests. Test history is available too.

IBM Enterprise Edition for Galasa

Adding some Test Accelerator for Z specific capabilities...

• IBM Enterprise Edition for Galasa (IEEG) is the evolution of IBM Distribution for Galasa (DfG) with new features like the Galasa IMS DLI manager exclusively initially released in Test Accelerator for Z.

• IBM Enterprise Edition for Galasa provides the added capability to have an IMS DB (DLl) manager to test the back end changes against what the UI said you did, and is utilized by Functional Testing when generating tests for IMS flows where IMS DB writes are used.

• In addition, Galasa is updated to the very latest version, 0.43. Review the release notes.

• Multi-factor authentication is now supported when connecting to z/OS applications.

• Also, now there is a credentials store support, with framework.credentials.store, enabled with 3 settings.

  • secure.os:Mac => Credentials will be read from the MacOs Keychain.

  • secure.os:Windows => Windows Generic Credentials will be used.

  • secure.os:Auto => automatically select whether to use MacOs Keychain or Windows Generic Credentials.

The new IBM Enterprise Edition for Galasa 1.1.4 enables the IMS Database Assertions in Functional Testing:

Final Words

• Learn more through our documentation.

• More to come! This was just a start into all of the amazing things that the IBM Test Accelerator for Z can do!

• Don't forget your host! Upgrade the Dynamic Test Engine as well, and also get the latest PTFs.

• Also, the VS Code extensions use of .rec files are an enhanced format for the release, please re-record and take advantage of the higher fidelity.

Happy Testing!