Testing and production phases

Before explaining the test and production configurations for WebSphere Application Server for z/OS, you must understand which test phase should be done on the z/OS platform and which should be done on other platforms.

Note: Sharing resources between a production workload and a test workload potentially can expose the production workload to a set of error conditions to which it would not be exposed if the production and test workloads ran in different cells. For this reason, you should run production and test workloads in separate cells on your system.

Before explaining the test and production configurations for the Application Server, you must understand which test phase should be done on the z/OS platform and which should be done on other platforms. The following sections explain the different phases:

Test and production phases

Unit test phase

The development platform for WebSphere Application Server for z/OS is a WebSphere distributed system (for example, Windows or Linux Intel). The development environment includes tools such as WSAD for Web content delivery. The IBM tooling solution assumes that you develop enterprise beans in WSAD and perform unit (basic) testing of the business logic in the WebSphere Test Environment.

Component test phase

Component testing involves the joining together of several beans into logical components, providing them with access to data, and testing them together. While this can be done on WebSphere Application Server for z/OS, most of our current installations perform this level of testing using a distributed platform such as Windows 2000 running WebSphere Application Server Advanced Edition. This allows a small team of developers to join the pieces of code that they have developed together and test the interactions. This testing does not test z/OS platform functions and features directly, but focuses on the individual beans and the relationships between them.

Function test phase

Function testing involves joining the various components together, connecting them to test data in the target database, and validating the function that the application provides. Where this test is performed is dependent on what the function is, and what its data requirements are. If the target deployment platform is z/OS, then it may make sense to do this level of testing there. This is possible by setting up one or more test servers into which the application is installed.

When the application is installed into the test server, the installer defines where in the JNDI directory the references to the application will be stored. The test clients will need to be configured with this information that tells the clients the location of the test application. The test clients will then drive requests against the test server to perform the functional testing. You can also use remote debugging tools to diagnose problems you encounter along the way.

System test phase

Before you put an application into production on z/OS, you should deploy the code into a WebSphere Application Server for z/OS server for testing. You may bring up the application and simulate a real load on the application. The important point here is that the code needs to run on z/OS before it goes into production. To do this, you need to define an additional test server (on a whole new cell dedicated to the test system) and install the application into it. When installed, beans that are part of the application should be registered in a different subtree of the JNDI directory (this occurs by default). The test clients need to be configured to the version of the application that is being tested and the tests run.

Production phase

You can install the application in a production WebSphere Application Server for z/OS cell after you are satisfied with the functional and system testing. The difference between a production cell and a test cell is whether the remote debugger is allowed to be attached. Normally, it is not acceptable for a production workload to stop because someone flowed a remote debugging request to it.




Searchable topic ID:   cruntestprod
Last updated: Jun 21, 2007 9:56:50 PM CDT    WebSphere Application Server for z/OS, Version 5.0.2
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