Testing in Many Environments

Testing programs without CA Verify for VTAM is difficult because your test region differs significantly from your production environment. For example, it is very hard to replicate the:

Number of terminals
Types of terminals
Program activity

With CA Verify for VTAM, it is easy to simulate production conditions. That means you can perform all types of testing; unit, integration, concurrency, regression, stress, and migration, so you know your application will perform as expected. This chapter explains in detail how to use CA Verify for VTAM to perform these types of testing.

To test applications effectively, you need well-constructed tests. CA Verify for VTAM greatly simplifies the task of creating these tests. All you have to do is log test streams. Optionally, you can edit these test streams to meet your testing needs. For example, you can combine test streams, alter the input data to test a variety of conditions, or delete a sequence of screens. As you save test streams, you'll create a library of tests that will always be available to test application and system changes.

You can test all applications that run under MVS VTAM, including IMS/DC, CICS, TSO, and CA IDMS/DC applications. For example, you can create a system test to run after an IMS or MVS upgrade. Or, use CA Verify for VTAM to test VM applications running under Netview or to capture TSO SPUFI sessions. You can even automate batch testing by logging a test stream which submits and reviews batch jobs under TSO.

You can even log applications that run under multiple environments. For example, suppose you have a CICS application that passes data to another CICS application. However, before the data is passed, it is sorted in batch. You can use CA Verify for VTAM to log all three steps: the first CICS application, the middle TSO application that submits the batch job, and the second CICS application. If any step changes, you can test the entire job.

To further streamline the testing of application or system changes, CA Verify for VTAM provides a powerful Rules function to use with your library of test streams. Rulesets let you identify the expected changes to the existing test stream due to application or system changes. By running the test stream in the new application with a specified ruleset, you can eliminate the need to stop at the expected changes, greatly streamlining your testing.