Mainframe a La Mode| Zowe: Adding Your Favorite Flavor to Mainframe Development and Automation
Hello everybody. Welcome to another mainframe, alamo. Session, i'm matt cousins, from ibm, and i'm so glad that you joined us today, uh. Whenever, today is whether you're catching this live or uh on the replay, or or whatever. I'm very, very jealous, of our friend from brazil, joining us i know it's got to be warmer there, uh than, here in new york or uh in pennsylvania. Um, so this is made from aloe mode we're we've been getting together every other friday, to discuss. Different, topics, related to z or linux one or sometimes, both. Um. And. I'm really excited to have mike bauer with us today from broadcom, to talk about zoe. Zoe is probably, one of two or three, products. Um, that i talk about most frequently. Uh with clients, around modernization. So. I'm really excited to be highlighting this one today. And, i know i'll learn something from mike. Uh mike thanks for joining us i appreciate, it and i'm gonna, go ahead and kill my audio and video and let you take over. All right thanks matt and, thanks everyone, from, for joining from around the world i'm going to go ahead and, share my screen and, let's get started. Throughout this presentation. I'll keep my try to keep my eye on questions. So. If you have. If you have any questions along the way feel free to just um. Type them right there in the chat. Um. And. Matt could you just confirm, you can see my screen here. Yep you're all set mike. All right very good, um. Okay. So as matt mentioned, i'm michael bauer my product owner here at broadcom. And i'm also the zoe cli, squad lead. Today. We will be discussing. How zoe. Enables, you to, add your favorite flavor, to your mainframe, development, and automation. If you haven't heard of mainframe, or you're thinking what's a zoe. Don't worry, as we'll cover all of that and more. Throughout today's, presentation. Just a brief legal disclaimer. Just saying. As i represent, broadcom, that this presentation. Is simply for informational. And educational. Purposes. Only. Um a little bit about myself, before we get started. Is i started, here. As a software, engineer. At the time it was ca technologies. Now we're, broadcom. I started a little over five years ago. When i came in to the mainframe, organization. I went through, a training, bootcamp, so to speak, and i learned all the tools and technologies. That are traditionally. Used by by mainframers. You know even today, so i learned. Ispf. Uh how to write jcl. How to submit rec scripts. Um if you don't know about those. Technologies. I'll cover those as well throughout the presentation. But basically. That was the environment, i was thrown into. About five years ago, and, my experience, as a software, engineer. Was that i was a full stack developer, working on z os applications. So i worked on both the back end as well as modernization. Efforts. Related, to. Web uis. A couple popular. Broadcom, products that i had worked on. Include ca netmaster. And then also, feeding. Networking, metrics, into, a mainframe, operational, intelligence. Tool, which is used to, provide, predictive, analytics, and allow you to troubleshoot, issues earlier. But after a few years. Working. On those, initiatives. I transitioned. Into a product owner role for what is now known as the zoe command line interface. And today. I am the zoe command line interface. Squad lead and i'll be talking a lot about the zoe cli. Throughout today's. Presentation. A little bit on the lighter side, um, in my personal, life i enjoy hiking with my wife shannon, as well as my, trainwalker. Coonhound, mira. And uh when i'm not hiking, or working on devops. And and. Zoe technologies. I also enjoy going fast on the weekends, so i'm always up for talking about race cars if anyone's interested.
And. Maybe that's where uh, that's where my love for devops, comes in with the, the need for speed. Also if you're not familiar with, devops, or agile, methodologies. I will be covering those. In this presentation. As well. So. Today's, presentation. I wanted to make it applicable. For all audience. And experience. Levels. So to kick off we're going to talk about mainframe. What's the big deal, why is it important. And what's its impact, on society, today. Then i'll transition. Into. Zoe's, importance, to mainframe, driven enterprises. Talk about, where zoe, is today. And how it is growing. Now i really want to talk a lot, about how, this technology. Can help you, whether you're just getting started. In the mainframe. Environment. Or you're an experienced. Mainframer. Interested, in leveraging, some new tools and technologies. And then, i will provide a demonstration. Of these tools, in action. Followed up with some additional, resources. For your reference. And then i'll try to answer any questions that that you may have. So. First, mainframe. What's the big deal. Well did you know, that, 1.3. Million, kicks transactions. Run per second, across, mainframes. And you might not know what a kix transaction. Is and i'll cover that in more detail. Later in the presentation. But just know, that, the benefits, of mainframe. Are focused, around, scalability. Resilience. And high availability. Security. And backwards compatibility. Um, the mainframe, is the backbone. Of. A lot of the major, um. Major organizations. Today in the fortune 500. So it cannot break, it cannot, uh. You know it has to scale. To an enterprise, level effectively. So just in in. Comparison. To this 1.3. Million transactions, per second. We see about, 6.9. Thousand tweets per second. Thirty thousand facebook, likes per second, and sixty thousand google searches, uh per second. Today. But even more, uh awesome. I, found, these uh these statistics. On on mainframe. In preparation, for today's, call, and some of these even even intrigued me so i knew a lot of. The fortune, 500. Companies, relied on mainframe. But it's actually. Over, over 70, percent. Of the fortune 500. Uh rely on on mainframe. And an even more powerful. Uh statistic. Is that as of 2000. 2019. 96. Out of the 100, largest banks in the world. 9 out of 10, of the largest insurance, companies. And 23. Out of the 25, largest, retailers, in the u.s, continue. To depend, on mainframes. Also you see. The government, depend a lot on on mainframes, as well. You may have. Heard during the kobit 19. Pandemic, that even the state of new jersey. Governor. Was reaching out for, assistance, in in cobalt. And another. Adjacent, effort, to. Zoe. Underneath, the open mainframe, project is the cobalt, programming, course this is another effort that i'm involved, in but if you're interested, in learning.
Cobol, And some of the technology. That these organizations. Rely on i definitely recommend, checking out. That course. As well. Also, mainframes. Can handle, or they do handle 90, of all credit card transactions. Over 30 billion business transactions. Each day. And, mainframes, handle, 68. Percent, of the world's production, it. Workloads. But they have a small footprint, so they account for only six percent. Of it, costs today. So. Mainframe's. Clearly, critical, to life as we know it, what's zoe's, importance. To this, mainframe. Driven, enterprise. Well, the mainframe. Is still growing. Both in usage. And in lines of code so development, continues, on the mainframe, each and every day, and, the usage, of the mainframe. Continues, to grow. However. The lack of agile, development, and devops, culture. Are barriers. To, enterprises, who are trying to move with more speed. Uh if you are unfamiliar, with agile, development, and and devops, practices, let me take a moment here. To explain. So the theme, of, agile, development. Is iterative, processes. We want to have constant, feedback, from our customers, to ensure we are building the right thing. And solutions, need to involve, through these discussions. Essentially. Devops, aims to shorten the development. Software development, life cycle. And it'll enable, teams to continuously. Deliver. High quality, software. So in a way, you can think of devops. As enabling. Agile. Or at least shorter in, iterations. Without incurring. High. Manual, costs for, for releases. You can imagine today. If you were. Let's say delivering. Uh two times a year right six months. Then maybe your release, cycle. Taking, two weeks. Isn't uh, isn't a dire consequence, but as you wanna shorten down these iterations. From six months to let's say six days, or even six hours. Then. You can see that having automation, in place and adopting, devops, practices, is critical. So that you can release software, continuously. And constantly, get feedback. From your customer, base. So i want to continue, a little bit more here with the, challenges. The challenges, of using mainframe, today. It's often cited, that mainframe, development, is possibly, too slow, maybe. There's a lot of manual, activities, that go on in order to deliver, and release, software. And it's constrained. In the number of choices. Of, tools that are available. To. Mainframe, developers. But with zoe, as i'll talk about later the mainframe. Being, a silo. The days of that are definitely, numbered. From an application, development, perspective. With, zoe, we enable the use of all these distributed, tools and technologies. And. You'll be able to move faster. And use the tools you, you like or, even tools you might not be familiar, with today, but, there's a lot of opportunity.
Out There. So today's. Mainframe. Experience. Is. Relatively. You know, folks would look at this as possibly. Outdated. The legacy, tools, of the past they're not engineered, for, for necessarily, speed. Um they're they're panel driven. And likely more important, is that these tools. Are not familiar, to those graduating. Into the workforce, today. Specific, training. Is commonly, provided. Before these new hires can be, effective. I'm drawing from my own experience, working here at broadcom. When i came in. I um. I had background, in in software, engineering, but i didn't know, anything, about. The tools and technologies, of the mainframe, using, ispf. Panels. Uh writing jcl, writing rex, i had to. Learn all of that. And. Um. I did and and there's fairly successful. Um onboarding, onto my, teams, but there's a lot here. That, just because you can learn the way of how it's done. There's a lot that isn't necessarily, available. On on mainframe, directly, today. And i wanted to. Benefit, from those other tools and technologies. But there is another choice to uh, before, zoe, um. In regards, to an interface for working with the mainframe, platform. And that was um eclipse. Um but you could still be stuck here, when you're using eclipse on waiting for, you know possibly proprietary. Enhancements, from a specific, vendor you're working with. Now i'm i'm not going to claim everyone, should use a specific. Development, tooling stack. You know i don't necessarily, even, even believe that i'm all in, on, freedom of choice, so if you're successful, with these tools today. That you know that's great. But in this presentation. I want to show, the choices. That are available. To you today. So. Let's take a step back. I know a lot of folks they're their die hard on their, development, tooling choices but let's take a step back and discuss some. Discuss, the wider population. So. Let's look at things a little bit a little bit differently, here so the in this slide, the optimist. Would see this glass, as half full. But maybe the pessimist, would see the glasses. Half, empty. So i want to look at things a little differently, i want to question the status quo. And, i have a link here, to a ted talk where one of our one of the great storytellers, of our time malcolm gladwell. Recounts. The story. Of howard, moskowitz. Who is famous for reinventing. Reinventing, spaghetti, sauce. Now howard would say. There is no perfect spaghetti, sauce. There are only perfect, spaghetti, sauces. So howard, viewed, the world a little bit differently. You know he embraced the diversity. Of people. So the story, goes, that around this time there was only one type of spaghetti, sauce and that was that was plain. And, prego, was struggling, against ragu. Even though prego. Was considered, a superior. Spaghetti, sauce by all the measurements, they were using, at that time. And, no one, in the, world, was really requesting, a different spaghetti, sauce, plain was what was available, and, plain was what they. What they had. Um. But uh through. Howard's, testing. He realized, that, hey you know there are different tests out, taste, out there in the world. And this opened the door to not only plain, spaghetti, sauce but extra, chunky. Spicy. Garlic. And, more you know so, prego, no longer struggled, after that, and. Another, story is that howard was also involved, with, vlasic, pickles. So you can also think howard. I think of howard saying you know there's no perfect pickle, right there are only perfect pickles. And for all you garlic lovers out there. You have uh, you have howard to thank, for, garlic pickles. And i really like this story, right because howard was able to look at the problem. Through, a different lens. Now. Don't get me wrong i would have probably, said plain spaghetti sauce was just fine. But when i think about folks in my own life, my brother-in-law, on the other hand. He probably needs a little bit more garlic. In his spaghetti, sauce. Right so, the status, quo, in terms of mainframe. Is enterprise, proprietary. Tools. You have. Some choice but it is you know rather, limited. And popular, technologies. In the distributed, computing, world, you know they're eventually, brought over, to mainframe. So. You know we originally, you must. Like plain spaghetti, sauce so to speak but, that, has evolved, into you know here is plain, and chunky. But maybe that's maybe that's not sufficient. So, looking at this through a new lens. Would be. Enable, the shift to open source, you know have a bridge, tool, that enables, open source technologies. All of them all of the flavors, to be used in mainframe, development. And, allow, those using the software.
To Be able to, effectively. Contribute, back, you know there's a lot of spaghetti, sauces, out there, um but even when i'm cooking, uh right i might add my own spices, into the mix right so being able to customize. Tools to to how i want to use them. And, there are more flavors. Of open source than than you can possibly, list. I mean i'll go into that. Uh. In more detail. But i just wanted to, you know clarify. And confirm, that in this presentation. It's just showing, you what opportunities. Are out there, and there's a lot of tools that were previously. You know unavailable. For your day-to-day. That you can now take advantage, of. Okay. So the first. The open first, open choice, approach. Provides. Clear, devops, benefits. So, we, we look at the world today and we see. Small lead times, to deployment. Because of automated. Continuous, integration. And continuous, delivery, tools. And also there's a culture aspect of this too, as devops, is adopted throughout an organization. We see developer, productivity. Improve. And what we want our developers, to focus, on, at least for the teams i work on are coding. So we believe that all manual, processes. In a way should be automated. And of course you know that requires. Investment. But you get a lot of payback, over time as you continuously. Deliver, software. By minimizing, the amount of, manual effort involved. And also folks love using open source tend to love using open source tools in the world. Um. A lot of, uh, here we see 87, percent of developers, use open source tools. And. You know that's that's really our goal it's enable. You to have a choice, you can use whatever you want. You know we're not trying to rip, ispf. Out of your hands. We're not trying to say get off the green screen. We're not taking any of our green screen interfaces. Out of any of our tooling. But we are going to provide some alternatives. That can be used. And you know they might be more appealing, to to new mainframers. Or folks joining the workforce. I've also found, that there's a lot of folks who are lifelong, mainframers. Who are. Really interested. In the technologies. That this is enabling. And. Really. Present in in the conversations, that i have had and willingness, to. You know adopt, or investigate, some of these new. Options. And we're not. You know this, adoption, of open source is certainly not, limited. Uh to the mainframe. Environment. So here we see that the ceo, of microsoft, stated. That we're all in on open source. In fact microsoft, recently bought very popular. Technology. Github. And they continue, to contribute, back to the, open source world. We see just as, a lot of the fortune 500, companies, rely on mainframe. They also rely heavily on on open source. And. Another, important. Stat here because when we talk open source some folks get concerned, about. About quality. But a large number of developers. View open source. Technology. As equal or higher quality, than. Uh proprietary, and you might be asking well why is that. I think a big reason. Is that. Everybody. Can see. Opens, open source technology. Work together to improve it, and the usage, of these. These open source packages. Is very, heavy. Millions, of software components, rely on particular, modules, so if there's ever a problem, there's a large community. You know addressing. Those issues. Okay so we talked about. Mainframe, a lot and talked about the adoption. Of, open source tolling. Now, zoe. Is really the, centerpiece. For enabling, this transformation. And enabling. Tooling. This distributed, and open source tooling, to be available, to mainframe, teams. And zoe, is growing. So you might be asking first well, what is zoe, and where did it come from. Zoe, is currently. A member of the linux foundation's. Open mainframe, project. You might be familiar, with the linux foundation. As the home for the linux kernel. Or the kubernetes. Project. Now. Zoe, originated. From contributions. Of broadcom. Ibm, and rocket software. In february. Of 2019. And in february, of this year, we announced, a long-term. Support, version. For zoe. Now at its heart zoe is an open and extensible. Interface, to the mainframe. The zoe platform. Enables, the use of these open source technologies. To be leveraged. While working, on the mainframe. And this has huge, implications. Right as i said before. It. It modernizes. Development, on z os by enabling. Devops. With a common, tool stack so, you might hear on the distributed, side of the house that teams are using. Devops, tolling, like. Jenkins, and, and docker, etc, to be able to release, faster. Those tools and technologies.
Are Now available. For your work on mainframe. And, for additional, information, on zoe, just want to reference, and i have a resource, link later as well, but check out our home page at zoe.org. So let's take a look at the at the zoe ecosystem. First. This is all made possible. By. The emergence. Of rest apis. On the mainframe. These services, enable, remote, access. To. Z os. And then zoe provides additional, security. And user experiences. User experience, on top of this, so the first example. Is seen in the api mediation, layer here just above. Just above the. Microservices. The. Emergence, of these microservices. Is more and more become available. You need a means to manage, them, and the api, mediation, layer fulfills. This need. The api, mediation, layer consists of three, key components. The first, is the api. Catalog. The api, catalog. Provides a graphical, view of all apis. Running on your system. A colleague of mine likes to call this the. An innovation, breeding grounds right a lot of times you might not be familiar, with what services, you can. Engage, with, and it shows you very simply. What services, are available, and how to access, them. The second component, of the api mediation, layer is the discovery, service. Which allows for rest apis, to be discovered, and dynamically, added to the catalog. And finally. The api, gateway. Component, of the api, mediation, layer. Provides, a single, secure, entry point for all api, requests. Without, this api, mediation, layer it is difficult, for api, consumers. To know what, apis, are available. On the system. It is difficult, to, configure, their client. Technology. To. Directly connect to each service. And, really for security, administrators. Is problematic. Opening, up ports for each service. And monitoring. Traffic as you can imagine, if you have, you know 20 micro services, and 20 open. Open ports. It it creates a larger attack vector, and also is a little bit difficult to manage, you know. Who is accessing, what. And in addition there's no centralized, security, means for authentication. As each service. Provides, its own and recently, uh zoe. Api mediation, layer had announced support i think it's about. A little over six months ago, announced support, for single sign-on. And token-based, authentication. So offering a more even more secure, experience. Now on top of that. Api, mediation, layer, zoe consists. Of a variety, of clients. So just moving, left to right here, across the top, the first client. Is. The, zoe app framework, browser, gui. And this, provides. System programmers. A ui. To quickly access the mainframe. This, this web desktop, consists of a variety, of applications. And it can be extended. Allowing for the use of multiple, services. At a single, url. Now the, zoe. Mobile, app. While it's still in its incubation. Phase, it offers quick access, to the mainframe. For when you are on the move, and if you're you know if you're interested, in any of these components, we'd also like to hear from you. You feel free to reach out to me. Directly. Or, on our zoe github, page and i'll provide a link to that, later in the presentation. Now next is the zoe, explore. Extension, it's a visual studio code extension. That streamlines, interaction, to z os data sets uss, files and jobs. And if you haven't heard of visual studio, code. It is a very well res, it has been very well received, and it is a, emerging. Uh, it is an emerging. Technology. So based on, uh stack overflows, i think, back in, 2016. Uh vs code only ranked. 13th. Among popular it's, but ides. But, only two years, later. It emerged. To the top spot. And it had over 35, percent of respondents, using it and then one year later in 2019. The stack overflow, survey showed over 50 percent of respondents. Leveraging. Leveraging, the ide. Now. Similarly. The zoe explorer is one of the most popular, components, in zoe. It has recently, exceeded, 18. 000. Unique installation. And in addition to zoe explore. There are a number of other, uh, visual studio code extensions, that have emerged, on the marketplace. For mainframe, development. Um i definitely recommend, checking out. All those um there's also a bundle, on visual studio code for mainframe, development, it's called code for z. And it, provides, a. Number, of. A number, of extensions, that are useful. For mainframe, development. Now. Who is this applicable, for so, we have seen system administrators. Application, developers, and devops engineers. All leveraging, this extension, to interact with the mainframe. And last but not least. The zoe command line interface. Enables. Interacting, with the mainframe. Like any other, cloud. Platform. Now, what's the advantage. Of, a command line interface, well a huge advantage of a. Command line interface is that it's both a, um. It's both a. User interface, interactive interface. And a programmatic. Interface. So, it enables, me to explore, services, and capabilities. Of z os in real time, but then easily, abstract those commands.
Into Scripts. And, clies. Are language, agnostic, which means, you know for most, for most scripting languages. I believe, almost all scripting languages. You can invoke, command line, operations. So. Using your language of choice, you can take these simple commands. And. Abstract, them into, into scripts, that meet your needs, i like to think of the zoe cli. Commands, as the basic building blocks, on top of which more complex. And useful, automation, can be, reconstructed. And you can just keep abstracting, that and i'll show that in in the demonstration. Today. Start with a simple command. Then try to abstract, that into a script, and then ultimately. Include that in in some. Some ci cd, orchestration. Tool. So that, others can invoke it and you can maintain your automation, very easily. Okay so did i mention that, the zoe platform. Is, extensible. Zoe provides. The idea, of a conformance. Program, and the idea of a conformance, program, is to ensure. Extensions, meet certain standards. So, if you're building. A. Api, that integrates with the zoe api mediation, layer building, a extension, for the zoe web desktop, or, building a plug-in into the zoe cli. You can fill out this conformance. A conformance, submission. And be added to our, ecosystem. Page. And, this program, is intended, to, ensure. Consumers. That everything, is going to work well together. In the zoe, environment. So here. We see. The growing ecosystem. Of conformant, extensions. Currently, there are 13. Api, mediation, layer integrated, apis. Five conformant. Web desktop, applications. And 25, conformant. Cli, plugins. And. The. The extensions. Are not just offered by zoe right we see other vendors. Participating. And engaging, in this space, so we see broadcom. Phoenix software, international. Ibm. Software engineering, and rocket software. Have all offered. Commercial. Zoe. Extensions. Okay. So this is my one of my uh, more favorite parts is how can zoe. Help, you today. You know whether you are knowledgeable. And open source. And seeking to journey, into mainframe. Or maybe you're a mainframe, specialist, interested. In leveraging. Some new innovative, technologies. That were previously. Unavailable. Let's let's check out how zoe can help, help you. Okay. So all these conformant, services, and extensions, that i was talking about. Open the door to, really an ocean. Of opportunity. And i honestly, i don't think that's any sort of exaggeration. On the distributed, side of the fence, there are modern task runners, like gulp. Task runners are. Tools that enable you to write automation, more effectively. And i'll touch on that in the demonstration. Testing, frameworks like mocha, and jest, these testing, frameworks, make writing tests more, more of an enjoyable, experience. They take out the need to set up all the infrastructure. To write tests, and there's things like assertion, libraries. Which, will. Compare, values, in ways you specify, to make sure things are as you would expect. If you're writing these without, these technologies. Right there's a lot of. Code. That you have to write to support that. There are also ides. Like visual studio code as i mentioned earlier. Cicd. Tools like jenkins. A big one we've seen getting heavy adoption. Because, of, zoe. Is code analysis, tools actually, like sonar, cube, i think i mentioned earlier i think it's 220. Um. I'm going to say this wrong maybe i think it's 220, billion lines of cobalt. So. There's all this cobalt code that has been, developed, by literally. Over literal decades. Right, and now, teams are seeing the ability, to, scan, that software to ensure code standards, and code quality. And all of that but the list goes on beyond even these tools, you know even consider, the number of software, packages, that are now available, for your use, i just looked the other day and, there are over, 1.3. Million, packages. On, npm, js, which is. Node's, public registry. And over 250. 000, on. Um. Python's, registry. And. These packages, enable you to. Build applications. Enable you to write scripts and they write automation.
Much More effectively. Because a lot of the common. Code that you would need to support what you're trying to do, has already, been, written, and. It's maintained, by the open source community. So you just basically have to write the code that's customized. For. Your. Um. For your particular, application. Now the access. To all these tools. Helps ensure, that no platform, is left behind. As enterprises. Transition. To, agile, development, and adopt devops, culture. You know one, central, goal, especially. For the zoe cli. Is to bridge the gap between. Modern open source tooling, and the mainframe. Now. That, we see devops. And agile, methodologies. Moving from mobile to cloud and distributed, to mainframe. We need to be able to make the use of the same tooling. That enabled. That enabled. Agile, processes. On these other. Other platforms. So whether you are developing, on mobile, or mainframe. We want the developer, experience. To remain the same. So. Let's look at an example, maybe your organization, today. Is a, is adopting, agile, methodologies. All right, you may be asked to develop, software, in shorter iterations. But, uh maybe this is, a very difficult. Heavy. Manual laden. Effort, right and, it involves. Significant. Time, for you to release the software. Zoe, and devops, tools can help with that and can automate much of that manual burden. And, of course, you know some investment. Is going to be needed, in setting up such automation. But the benefits, are very high as you increase your, your speed, of delivery. And you increase your frequency. Of release. So, what's the you know what was the challenge. Why. Why is this just now possible, well the main challenge, in the past. Was that traditionally, one could not interact. With the mainframe, in the same way that they can interact with cloud environments. Developers. Typically, interact with cloud prime, primarily, through command line interface. Interfaces. And, for. The. Name frame our goal isn't, to enable, developers. To work in the same way. Be able to access, all of the, tools that i mentioned earlier. So. Here we see that the zoe cli. Is the, is the tool that really bridges the gap between modern tools in the mainframe. And up until now i've been talking a lot about open source, and, and what's available. On that side of the fence, but i'd like to pause here for a second. And talk, some more about mainframe. For those who you know are maybe relatively, new new to the platform. So, as i mentioned earlier we've seen an emergence, of rest apis, on the mainframe. And these, rest apis. Enable, us. To access. Mainframe. Services. From off platform so like in this example we see michelle. She's using the zoe cli, to access, various, services, on the mainframe. For example. She might access. Xeosmf. And you might not be familiar, with, z os method stands for z os management, facility. It offers us rest apis, to, perform basic operations, on z os. Uh it is core to the zoe cli. Um. The functionality. Includes things like interacting, with the file system. Um, and on the on the mainframe. You, have um. Your your file, file structure is called data sets on the mainframe but you also have zos. Unix as well you can interact with, uh you can provision, services. Uh you can run different commands, on on the mainframe as well you can. Run, run jobs. Which is basically, like, running workload on the mainframe. And then ca endeavor. Here, is a, common. Source control management, solution one, it's the most popular, source control management solution, on the mainframe. Um. Ca filemaster, plus provides. A lot of, powerful, operations, for manipulating, z os data sets. Uh ca, ops mbs, event management, automation. It's it's the leader, in uh it's a leader in mainframe, automation. Um. And it allows, uh. That.
Tooling, Responds. To system events automatically. And helps to detect, problems. Before they arise, or impact. Impact users so that's a system automation, tool. And another one here, zos connect, it's a technology, for implementing, json services, and api and kicks. You might say what is kicks. Kick stands for customer, information, control system. It's an online, transaction, management solution. For mainframe. Applications. And. Transaction. Processing. Is the bread and butter for the mainframe, as i mentioned earlier it's able to. Process. Uh you know 1.3. Million transactions, per second. Um, and it the scalability. And security, around the mainframe, environment, makes it uh. A, prime. Technology. For, um. You know high, transaction. Workload. In addition we have a few databases. Database subsystems, here on the mainframe. Db2, is a relational, database, ims, is a, hierarchical, database, an ims. Also supports, transaction. Transaction, processing. Um. As as well, and, these are just a subset. Of, the. Services, that are available, for remote interaction. Right as i mentioned earlier we have 25. Conformant, zoe cli, plugins. Today to interact various services. On the mainframe. Okay, so that all sounds, uh sounds, great right i mean i i hope it sounds great, um, leveraging, the key benefits of mainframe, the security. The scalability. And and um. The resilience, and high availability. As well as you know the backwards. Compatibility. Meaning that the. The mainframe is a platform that you know it can never go down it's got to have, very high uptime, and it does. So having all those benefits, of the mainframe. And then combining, that. With the open source tooling that's available. The open source tooling that's helping enterprises, adopt devops. Adopt iterative, development. And agile methodologies. And reduce, the manual, manual. Pain points. In delivering, software. But, how does this all. Really, work. And what does it look like. Well in this section. We're going to check out some of the some of the zoe components. In action. So this is my uh this is my favorite part we're going to transition, into. A quick demonstration. So i'm going to stop sharing for a moment so i just share my uh share my other screen, one. Second. Okay. And. To. Share this screen. All right you should be able to see my screen. Let me go. Into my development, environment. Okay. Um so i'm just in a visual, studio, code, environment. I have a few. Um. Extensions. Installed, in this environment. Off of the marketplace. I mentioned there's quite a bit of. Of tolling that's available. I've installed this code for c extension, pack, which gives me access to this cobalt language support, plug-in, cobol control flow plug-in. As well as the zoe explorer. And, if you use the zoe explorer, you would notice an icon, over here on the left side. And. Like here we see i have access to. Z os unix, as well as. Z os jobs. And i also have access, to, data sets. Data sets doesn't necessarily. Have to appear, in this editor. Actually. This is fully customizable. So you can hide things, the, the i think a big reason, the zoe explorer. Is uh very popular and big reason visual studio code, is very popular. Today, is that it's a it's a hackable.
Text Editor that you can customize, to meet your preferences. So for example i didn't necessarily, like. Like the. Data sets on this panel because i work with it so frequently. I put it as part of my file explorer so i just dragged it over here. And, this component, allows me to search data sets. On the mainframe. So here. I can see all the different data sets underneath my high level qualifier. I can dig down into, a particular, data set. Very easily. And, select different members, to to view. And then with the help of other tooling like for example, here this is. Jcl. And, with the tolling that's now available, on the marketplace, i can get syntax highlighting, for jcl. And. Also. I'll show interacting, with with cobalt, as well and it makes for a fairly. Uh. Fairly, um superior, experience, to what i can get. With other tools you know i can. Make this all available on one screen so i don't have to click around. Now zoe explorer is great. For, exploration. But for automation. I depend heavily, on the zoe cli. If you're just getting started with the zoe cli. I recommend. Issuing. Zoe. Hw. For, help web. And this is just an easy way, to, navigate, the tool. And, see what's, uh see what's available. To you, so for example. It generates, the help, with all the. Different services, i can interact with now clearly. I have a large number, of plugins, installed certainly not all 25, but around i think with about 10 plugins, installed. If you're just getting started this is a good way to learn, i can see. For example files interaction, there's a group for. Files. And then if i wanted to list, something, i can list data set or all members. So for example listing data sets. And then at the bottom of each one of these we try to provide examples, that you can copy and paste into your terminal. To to learn. Um, how to use the tool. But as the cli squad lead, i kind of know how to use the tool a little bit, i should right. So here's the command zoe files lists data sets. And i'm just going to do the same list i did, on the gui. List data sets. And we can sell the data sets. And i can also list all members so just like i did over here. Zoe, files. List, all. Members. And that works, but i also wanted to. Highlight, that there are a number, of plugins, that i have installed. So in this case. Um, the source. For. My, program, that i'm working. With, lives, in endeavor. And now as i go through this demonstration. Just a high level overview, of the application. I'm working with, the application. Is named marbles. And all the application. Does, is manage an inventory, of marbles, in a database. In this case, the database. Is in db2. And, the, application. Is, a. Cics. Application. Written, in cobol. So, today. I have a lot of automation, in my environment. I said let's not spend time building. This application, let's not spend time. Deploying, it to a test environment. And let's not spend a lot of time. Testing. The application.
So, I wrote automation. Leveraging. Different, frameworks, that are now available. For working on mainframe. The first is a task runner called gulp and i'll just show some of the code. In here. And. Once you have kind of the basic. Basic functions, created, writing additional automation, is really a breeze. So for example. If you want to run a simple. Simple command. Just zoe endeavor generate, element. I wrote a function, that then invokes, this command. And. Was able to log all the output. So if anything ever goes wrong in like my my pipeline, which i'll show later. All of the, operations. That went on, as part of that. That workflow. Is. Is logged and available, for my review. Now before i, build this application. I just want to show. There's also tests. Available, and i'm going to going to run that. So npm. Test. So this is using a testing framework called mocha, it allows me to write tests. Very quickly. And efficiently. If i go into. The test code. You can see. It's more of the. Same. Right i'm running like issue commands. I'm issuing commands, to drive this, without those oecli. Driving the actions on on mainframe. I'd be unable, to make use of this uh. This framework. But for example. For. Get marble quantity. We can see i'm just running, a zoe db2. Command, under the covers. Now you might have noticed the test failed. So i need to make a code update, really quick. So if i want to retrieve, the element. From, endeavor, let's do a zoe endeavor retrieve element. The type of element i want to retrieve. And the file. To send it to. So i'm going to retrieve, this. And then. We see it over here. This is really the experience, i get today. When editing. Working with cobalt, in visual studio code, again nice outline view here, i get a nice uh also a nice view here that i could click around and quickly locate what i'm trying to work on, there's also a really interesting, extension, called, u cobalt control, flow, and it'll show me. The. Structure of my program. So in this case i know, the change, that i need to make, happen to be in, parse kicks input, i just click that. And, what i want to do, is today, i mentioned i'm managing an inventory, of marbles. I also want to manage i want to sell these marbles now right so i want to manage, the costs associated, with that, so i'm going to allow. For, a cost. Parameter. So, save that off. And i can just run another, zoe endeavor, command, to, update the element. Okay so i made my code change, and typically, now i want to build. And deploy. My code change, and then test it. And in the past. That would require me to go to a number of screens, on on 3270. But because i was able to write automation. I can do things like. Gulp build. This will. Build. Or, are you if you're familiar with endeavor it's running a generate. Command, to compile. My program. In endeavor. And it'll also. Compile. Generate the, the link element, so compile, and link edit my program. And then. Next. I would run a gulp deploy. To deploy, it to a test environment. In this case i'm going to show over on the left hand side, you know again somebody, else built this and i'm just leveraging, it there's, graphical. Interfaces. Too if you would rather. Click a button. Right so this will. Start my deploy. So it's copying. My dbrm, light and my and my load lab to some. Test environment. And then, it's going to. Run a binding, grant. And then it will refresh. The application. In my cics. Region. And this is all done without really. Leaving my screen right i'm all still in this single. Single, view i'm not, not really jumping around at all. And then if i want to run my npm, test now. Just invoke that i could also click the npm scripts over here. But my preference, maybe it's because i work on cli, all day but i like staying in the, in the terminal. Rather than clicking these buttons but just showing, sort of what's available. And. In addition to this. We see that pass now but in addition. This. Leveraged another open source tool to have a nice report.
I Open the containing, folder, let me launch this. You can see i get a nice view of my test in this case i'm just running one test, for the sake of time. You could run. You know, thousands, of tests in here and get a nice view of what passed what failed how long the test took to run. All, of those details. Switching. For a minute. Here. Let me go back, this is also all incorporated, in jenkins pipeline so this is great myself as a developer. I could build deploy and test my code to make sure it's all working. But one key to devops. Is having an audit trail ensuring things go through a standardized, process. And that everything, is everything is logged, so you can always refer back and see what happened right you don't want to trust really individuals. As much as you want to trust. Processes, that you can iterate, on and improve. So everything's checked in the source control, even the pipeline. Is checked into source control. And this is sort of what it looks like so. It's actually running in a. In a. Kubernetes. Environment. And, that's already pre-configured, with the zoe cli. And then it's running the same thing i ran here build deploy. And test. Let me just go to that environment. Now. And we can see here i ran it before we started the meeting. I will kick it off again, so it failed with the same error message we saw. Kick it off again now. But. Just like a cooking show maybe i could show, this pipeline, for the sake of time. You know this one ran successfully. And there's nice. Uis, again this is all. Just um. Just available, right now now for working on mainframe. Um so this is running, stage number five, but let me. Go back to this successful, run. And all, artifacts, are run so every time i. Ran a command, i get the output, of the command, here. Right. So. So. And then you could look at test results, and etc i get really the same ui all the jobs i submitted, all the outputs, logged here. But here's like the the test results. And. I think that. Let me go back here. The test results are logged the job messages, are logged. Basically, anything. That i would need to reference back to in case the pipeline, failed. Failed is logged so this is your. Your ci cd pipeline. And then. I also wanted to briefly, show. The, api, mediation, layer, which is, very valuable, when trying to set this all up so let me go. This is sort of what the api remediation, layer looks like, tells me what services, are available, to interact, with, and if you clicked into these they would tell you. Sort of the host port combination. And how to. How to access them. Remotely. Okay. Um, back to. The, slide, deck so let me stop. Sharing. And. Share screen. And. Okay. And demo time is over. So just to wrap up here i wanted to provide. A link, to. Links to valuable, resources. So. Again the zoe website, just for getting started check out zoe.org. Zoe doc site will cover, installation, and getting started instructions, for all the zoe components, highly recommend. Checking that out, but, where to really start i i honestly, recommend. These blog, sites, these blog, sites are full of sample use cases that you can leverage to get started. And you can see what's applicable, or most interesting, for your environment. So those blog sites are medium.com. Zoe and slash modern mainframe. Also if you're interested, in contributing. All the code is available on github.com. Zoe, but, contributions. Aren't limited, to. Code contributions. Just opening, up an issue. Or, you know even reaching out to us on slack, and we're, there's a large community. On. Slack.openmainframeproject.org. Um, in in the zoe space especially, so if you have any questions when you're getting started please, you know, don't give up. Reach out on slack and we'll be we'll be happy to help you. And lastly, if you are interested in building, a conformant. Uh, cli, plugin, so a web desktop, plugin, or. A api, that integrates, with the api mediation, layer. Please check out our, conformance, page. Just a sample of what's out there, so these are some sample, zoe cli, use cases. We've run a number of workshops, to help folks get. Get started. As far as. As far as leveraging, this technology. So, one. Um. One use case as i showed here was. Contin. Jenkins, continuous integration, and automation. Using, on this application, called marbles. But also. Received, interest in folks leveraging, zoe to for example maybe automate, maintenance, delivery, with with jenkins. And then a number of blogs. Available, i won't go into uh detail, on each of these but you can check out, all of them, on, medium.com. Zoe. I think the two. Use cases i've seen most leveraged. In enterprises, today. Are all at the bottom right here. So continuous, integration. For a mainframe, app, and, how to write cleaner, and safer, the os code.
With, Zoe cli. And sonar, cube. I think that wraps up the presentation. Thanks everybody, for, taking the time to, listen to me today matt do we have any questions, on the, on the line. Mike we've had actually, uh a couple of questions but i think we. We addressed, them all we've had a really good interactive. Uh chat session here between three or four of us. Uh, it might be the the sense of community, coming out you know. In the chat, it's one of the things i like about zoe the best i think is is the community, with the, like you said the big slack, presence, and everything. Oh here's here's a good question for you what's the, dog's name. Oh, yeah so it's it's meera, which is a little bit a little bit funny my wife says that we we named her that because it means peace and uh, she's she's a crazy, dog so, we're, we're all kind of, fortunate, i guess maybe that i, happen to be in the office here today because you'd be hearing, her uh how, in the background, for sure, yeah it's the it's the way we're, we do business, currently, right it's either dogs or kids or something. Well mike thanks again for uh. For presenting, and showing us a great demo and everything, i. I really enjoyed, um, seeing it all come together. And thanks everybody, for joining, um our next, session is going to be in two weeks. As scary as this sounds we have two more sessions, for the year. So in two weeks it's october, 23rd. And, um javier. Perez, will be joining us to talk about. Um, open source, on z, and sort of uh. You know the roots of open source on z, and i'm sure one of the things we'll be mentioning, in that space is zoe once again. Um, mike thanks again i hope to to run into you in person sometime. All right sounds good looking forward to it. All right guys, have a great weekend, if you're watching us live. And if not. And just in general.
2020-10-11 08:02
