Integrating Micro Focus
Enterprise Developer with Jazz
Before you start
(Prerequisites)
Step 1. Set up Jazz with Micro
Focus
Step 2. Batch Programming and Jazz Utilities
Step 3. Classical CICS Programming with Jazz and
Micro Focus
Step 4. Web Services with Jazz and Micro Focus
Disclaimer: This material is written by and represents
the opinions of Jazz Software Ltd. The use of Micro Focus examples in this and
related Help pages do not imply any contractual relationship between Micro
Focus and Jazz Software, nor that Micro Focus supports or recommends Jazz.
Integrating
Micro Focus Enterprise Developer with Jazz turbo-charges both products,
multiplying the productivity gains available from either individually, and
facilitating the world of distributed development (Mainframe/Unix/Windows).
Videos on the Jazz Web Site
show you how a simple Jazz program, often generated simply by selecting options
from a dialog, can generate COBOL programs in minutes for batch processes
(Print, Copy, Update files), for web service provider and requestors, and for
classical CICS programs. Productivity
ratios of 20:1 or more are common: one of our examples produces more than 100
lines of code for each line of Jazz.
The generated programs are submitted to the mainframe where the COBOL is
compiled, linked and run, and the result returned to the Jazz workbench. This demonstrates brilliantly – but what if
you make mistakes, or want some special logic that Jazz doesn’t (yet)
support? You’re back to old-fashioned
COBOL, interpreting dumps, or trying to understand hundreds (or thousands) of
lines of COBOL code in order to “make the one small change” that your problem
requires.
Micro Focus
software is a huge improvement on old-fashioned COBOL. You write your COBOL programs in your
favourite Integrated Development Environment (Eclipse, Visual Studio) on line,
immediately seeing your programs with keywords highlighted and errors detected
and reported. Your programs can be
compiled as native COBOL, or as managed code for the .NET or JVM
environment. You can then step through
them and interactively debug them with all the tools that you’d expect in a
modern development environment like Eclipse or Visual Studio, testing them
locally before releasing them to the target environment which might be Windows,
Unix, or a mainframe. You can develop
and test distributed systems, where web services in one part of the system or
environment provide data to other parts, using Micro Focus tools to follow
transactions and data through the system.
A dramatic improvement on old-fashioned COBOL. But it’s still COBOL, often requiring
hundreds of lines of code to achieve simple results.
Using Jazz
with Micro Focus Enterprise Developer combines the advantages of both to
provide a world-class development environment within your favourite IDE. You get the productivity gains of Jazz, most
of the time working in a simpler environment and at a much higher level than
directly working in COBOL. But instead
of then abandoning your COBOL to a remote mainframe batch process you compile
and test it locally in your own Windows environment, if necessary stepping
through the generated COBOL and inspecting data. You can generate and test web systems with
components on the mainframe working with Windows or UNIX components. Even your “mainframe” may be a Micro Focus
simulation, running on a local Windows or Unix system.
Material like this, written in the
normal text, but coloured green, either describes features that haven’t been
implemented yet, or discuss various future implementation options.
1.
You
will have Jazz installed and configured, at least to the stage where it is
generating COBOL to a local folder. You
may have gone further and set up Jazz to generate and submit the COBOL to a
remote mainframe, but that is not actually necessary for using Jazz with MF. You will have at least viewed the first video
and read the introductory chapter of this Users’ Guide.
2.
You
will have installed either Visual Studio or Eclipse, and be familiar with using
this IDE for your development. The
following material is illustrated using Micro Focus Enterprise Developer 3.0
with Visual Studio 2017. If you are
using another version of MFED or Visual Studio, or
you are using Eclipse,
then you may find detail differences, but hopefully these will not cause you
any problems. Please let us know of any issues where we
should enhance this documentation.
3.
You
will have installed MF Enterprise Developer, and familiarised yourself with
this using your IDE. You will have
accessed MF
Enterprise Developer documentation and worked through some of the tutorials
applicable to your IDE, for example learning how to create a COBOL Hello World
program, how to use local COPY code, and how to debug a COBOL program by
stepping through it, and setting checkpoints.
The first
task is to configure Jazz to integrate it with an IDE (Visual Studio or Eclipse) and MF Enterprise. Click here or the
heading to find out how to do this.
The next chapter in this Users’ Guide series shows you
how to create files (sequential and VSAM) that are used in Jazz demonstrations
and tutorials, and how to use facilities such as Convert COBOL (which reads
COBOL record layouts and converts them to Jazz) and create COBOL copy books for
use by manually-written COBOL programs.
The previous chapter dealt with batch programming.
This chapter builds on that foundation to create classical CICS programs,
communicating with 3270 screens as in the
initial video in the classical CICS series
Currently
Jazz Web Services, either as a Web Service Provider or a Web Service Consumer,
have been developed and proven with z/OS, but haven’t yet been tested with
Micro Focus.
|
.NET |
Microsoft’s development framework – a series of support classes used by programs generated with Visual Studio. |
|
IDE |
Integrated Development Environment. For example Visual Studio (Microsoft), Eclipse (Open Source) |
|
MF |
Micro Focus |
|
MFED |
Micro
Focus |
|
VS |
Visual Studio |