CASE: Test Parallelism and Operational Efficiency in Mainframe Applications
CLIENT: ViaVarejo S.A.SOLUTION: Eccox Data Setup (ESX)
With the operationalization of the DB2 environment construction process, Via Varejo achieved efficiency in the quality of tests in the z/OS environment, aligned with the Agile and DevOps initiatives.
Via Varejo, with its administrative headquarters in São Caetano do Sul - SP, is the company responsible for the management of two crucial Brazilian retailers: Casas Bahia and Ponto Frio. Present in more than 400 Brazilian municipalities, 20 states, and the Federal District, it has around 50 thousand employees and positions itself as one of the largest retailers of electronics in the world.
DevOps represents a change in the IT culture, focusing on rapid service delivery through the adoption of agile practices in the context of a systems-oriented approach. Via Varejo sought in the market a company with expertise and technology that would meet this initiative, selecting Eccox as a partner in this endeavor.
In one of the most significant projects in recent years at the company, Via Varejo, together with Eccox developed a new DB2 environment architecture that would make possible the parallelism in the development and testing of systems, with quick replacement of test tracks and alignment on the DevOps treadmill.
“Eccox was selected for presenting the best solution to the requested technical requirements and adherence to the Via Varejo process. The study included the technology, work plan, adherence to infrastructure, ease of use and management of the use of the tool”, inform the Technology Managers: Fabio Kawasoko and Thiago Teixeira, and the Project Managers: Ricardo Ciosani and Agnaldo Vieira.
The project started in September 2017 with the implementation of the Eccox Data Setup (ESX) solution for mass data treatment, and with the support of the Eccox team. The process of building DB2 environments was established, including development, approval, and pre-production, with knowledge transfer to the Via Varejo team that started to manage the process and technology as of January 2018.
From the traditional mainframe testing environment with a DB2 in development and an approval environment, Eccox Technology enabled Via Varejo to have the entire DB2 tree and its dependencies between tables. Which with the application of reduction criteria and the automatic generation of processing extraction and loading, create ten test tracks[1] for the development of the company's systems, including a matrix track for quick replacement of the tracks made available in case of demand. Within this model of parallelism, the DB2 homologation environment was duplicated. Thus, providing the reduced DB2 homologation environment and the pre-production DB2 environment on the DevOps track.
Thus, the entire control of the DB2 tree has also been managed. With its trained team, it enables Via Varejo with the use of Eccox Data Setup (ESX) process and technology to reconstruct these environments in a window less than 48 hours, with a gain in efficiency in maintenance and compliance for the use of reduced bases, reduction of efforts to generate test environments based on other environments, retention of intelligence applied in the generation of test environments and rapid re-execution of processes.
"Technology and processes must always go together to enable the real benefit relationship expected by our customers" says Mauricio da Costa e Silva, CEO of Eccox.
[1] Test Track is a term used at Eccox to denominate each test running in parallel, term created for the functionalities of the product Eccox APT.
