Comments on: Mainframe Testing Tools

By: ITKEditor

ITKEditor — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:04:04 +0000

nbsp;Search390.com member Bob G. wrote:

Our shop had been an Xpediter shop for a number of years and most of us had gotten to know and love the product. It just seemed to do well for whatever we needed. We’re an IBM z/os COBOL shop. And with Xpediter you really didn’t have to worry about any special JCL doctoring - the tool does whatever it needs in that area as a front end to the test.

But MIP based pricing got to be a problem. We have a processor configuration with several large LPARs, and for awhile actually limited use of Xpediter to one of the smaller engines to keep the charges down, but it is still a “license-expensive” tool to use.

Eventually the I.T. management team decided on moving to some other test tool, and did a survey of what was available. What they came up with was IBM’s DEBUG TOOL. Well, to be frank, those of us who were used to driving a Maserati felt like we were being forced into a 1986 Yugo !

The transition is now the better part of a year old, and we’re probably over the transition shock, but DEBUG TOOL still has enough faults that you’re aware of them every time you use it. The screen display is unfriendly (yes it can be changed); commands feel like they are much more “typing intensive” than those of Xpediter; and what you have to key in to view the content of a field in an occurs area to me is a joke. Data item qualification requirements at first I could not believe.

But it is usable. For us I guess the deciding factor was cost. But license cost was the only aspect of it that was looked at. The hue and cry from the development staff over lost productivity wasn’t heard until it was too late. Now I think the people on the selection team realize that there are other cost aspects as well. Labor cost, lost time cost
etc that are more difficult to quantify than a monthly or annual license fee. We are getting used to DEBUG TOOL, but ….

By: GreyLensman

GreyLensman — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 10:51:52 +0000

Another fact you might want to consider that I just became aware of is that CA-Intertest will not work with optimized programs. if you use CA-Intertest, you *must* specify OPT(NONE) or as a result of the optimization done, your breakpoints will either not work at all or will be unpredictable. The lead for the CA-Intertest programming group has stated CA does not consider this their problem and are not going to fix it. If you don’t optimize then this won’t impact you.

By: rmainframer

rmainframer — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 08:45:21 +0000

I work with CICS/VSAM systems, Assembler and COBOL. We have IMS but I am not involved with it. We use Intertest for online and Xpediter for batch. Some say we only need Xpediter, and they prefer it. I like Intertest and have not used online Xpediter.

By: girlnerd

girlnerd — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 09:41:42 +0000

Thank you all for your input.

I didn’t realize Strobe could be used as an analytical tool. I thought it was strictly a performance tool. It’s been years since I’ve used it, I’ll have to take another look.

Again, Thanx!

By: cglancy

cglancy — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 16:08:35 +0000

I’ve used SmartTest, Xpediter, InterTest, and IBM’s Debugger. I’m with GreyLensMan in preferring SmartTest. IBM’s Debugger is a poor copy of Xpediter and was very frustrating to use.

For analyzing your legacy programs (& current) a very useful tool is Compuware’s STROBE. It’s easy to set up and the reports are packed with useful information, even down to the line of code.

By: MEAnderson

MEAnderson — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:37:29 +0000

I have used Xpeditor eensively over the past eight years for Batch, CICS online, and DB2. I like it as a testing product, but the features the companies I have worked for don’t have any ‘anlaysis’ components for multi-level call analysis. Xpeditor will let you walk through each called module starting at the driver, if all are xpeditor compiled, or you can just process through the called module without xpeditor compiled code. Xpeditor does have features to save all breakpoints and tests between sessions (for the batch component, but not necessarily the CICS — it has been a few years since using CICS), and it has more features than the the average user will ever use. I have not used the other products, so I can not give you a comparable anaylsis.

By: GreyLensman

GreyLensman — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:22:00 +0000

I read the reply from BlueKnight and if you don’t like Xpeditor’s abend format you can hook in AbendAid. We do that here and it gives a little more information in a better format, especially for the IMS and DB2 abends.

By: BlueKnight

BlueKnight — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:23:34 +0000

We switched from Xpediter to InterTest roughly 6 months ago because the InterTest license was half the cost of Xpediter.

Both products are very similar both in how you set break points, keeps etc. and execution control functions are equivalent. I was fairly familiar with Xpediter so there was a small learning curve in the switch, but as I recall, I liked the ABEND feedback from InterTest better. InterTest displays are a bit different from Xpediter, but fairly similar.

I have not used either product with an Assembler program since all new programs, and 99.9% of modified programs are COBOL. I’m one of only three guys who know Assembler here. I have not used SmartTest so I can’t provide any info on it, but fortunately you’ve got some info from another respondent.