Available Cobol Development Setups (zOS)

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There are many alternatives for working with Cobol applications on a z/OS system. There is no single set of instructions to provide and no single tool stack to recommend.

To incorporate cobol-check with your development work flow, you will need to create a setup (or adjust your existing setup) so that you can:

• submit batch jobs from USS to compile, bind, and test Cobol programs
• access USS resources from the MVS side
• access MVS resources from the USS side
• (possibly) transfer files between Windows and z/OS or between off-platform OS X/Unix/Linux and z/OS
• execute Java applications on-platform (cobol-check is a Java application)

For text editing, you have a wide range of options, including:

• traditional ISPF and OEDIT tools on-platform
• commercial products that run under Microsoft Windows with a live connection to a z/OS instance (see Microsoft Windows User Guide)
• Open Source Cobol or commercial compiler for Windows, OS X, Unix, or Linux and any editor or IDE of your choice, working off-platform and using FTP to transfer files to/from z/OS (see Microsoft Windows User Guide, Apple OS X User Guide, and Unix and Linux User Guide.

For scripting cobol-check builds and unit test runs, you can use the z/OS shell or the tcsh on-platform; JCL using IBM-supplied facilities to initiate Java programs from the MVS side; or any tools of your choice off-platform, using FTP to move sources between platforms. You can also create scripts to tie into your Windows-based commercial z/OS development tooling or your preferred open-source editor or IDE, if that level of customization is supported.