QA Manager

As QA Manager, I work with R&D managers to define standards, methods and metrics and select the tools used by development teams to improve our code quality.

JI take a macroscopic view and identify quality metrics that will continuously measure the overall quality of code within our organization. I monitor the value stream to identify underperforming teams and help implement corrective actions. I manage our functional testing teams and the end-to-end testing process to help keep our applications available 24/7. Our enterprise testing tools struggle with the IBM i side of the business. Security is an ever-growing concern and a shared responsibility between our teams.

How can ARCAD help me?

Your QA Challenges and Goals

Automated tools are an essential part of the modern QA process and finding the right tools is a key objective for the QA Manager. The diverse spectrum of platforms within many organizations means that open source QA tools and UI-based testing products are sometimes too generic in nature and do not go deep enough on the IBM i platform to be effective. They focus mostly on reporting defects rather than identifying causes and helping to put things right immediately. Shifting quality left in the development process is a challenge because developers tend to leave testing until the end and then are pressed for time. In Agile/DevOps environments there is little time for code peer reviews, unit testing or regression testing and often there are insufficient metrics available to monitor code quality. Some legacy IBM i code can be difficult to understand and change and this compounds the code quality challenge.

How can Arcad help?

Empower your teams with QA tools designed for IBM i

ARCAD tools go deep on the IBM i platform because they are built by IBM i developers for IBM i. The IBM i platform is unique in that it has a proprietary operating system, database, communications, control language, security system and application development language (RPG). Standard open source QA tools work independently from this architecture so they take a superficial approach to QA when it comes to IBM i. ARCAD tools have been designed by IBM i experts specifically for the platform in collaboration with engineers from IBM Labs. ARCAD DevSecOps tools share IBM i application knowledge to give a highly granular approach to improving (not just reporting on) code quality.

Automate a source code ‘quality gate’ on IBM i

ARCAD CodeChecker will help maintain the highest standards of code quality without introducing time consuming manual code reviews. CodeChecker works like an automated peer review which is always available to check code using team-defined and pre-shipped quality rules. For example the DevSecOps can introduce quality rules which highlight code changes which would introduce security vulnerabilities. The development team can introduce quality rules which highlight code changes which make code less maintainable or slower to execute. CodeChecker can be integrated with Jenkins to make code quality checking a continuous background activity and with SonarQube to produce code quality reports and metrics.

Automate IBM i unit and functional testing to ‘shift defects left’

ARCAD iUnit makes it quick and easy to create test cases by clicking on objects and procedures and entering input parameters and expected results. Test cases can be executed individually at any time even as code is being changed. They can be grouped into test suites so that many tests can be run all at once. ARCAD iUnit also has program mocking and freestyle capabilities which auto generate test code.

Once in the QA environment ARCAD Verifier automatically tests code for regressions. It will capture keystrokes and results of business functions before changes are made and store them as test data. The tests are automatically re-run after changes are made to ensure that no unexpected regressions have been introduced. Test data is reinitialized automatically. Quality reports and metrics are maintained automatically.

Clean legacy code and remove obsolete objects

ARCAD Audit helps improve code quality by automating the cleanup of legacy IBM i application code. Auto-detect anomalies between source code and objects; archive and delete obsolete source code and compare and realign environments.

Modernize IBM i source code and start to eliminate technical debt

Modern, standardized code is easier to maintain and monitor for quality issues.

ARCAD Transformer RPG simplifies and accelerates the modernization of legacy IBM i code. Automate the conversion of fixed format legacy RPG IV code into modern Free-Form RPG which is easier to understand and learn by Java developers and easier to modify.

ARCAD Transformer DB converts DDS databases to standard SQL.
ARCAD Transformer Synonconverts 4GL Synon (CA 2E) code to modern RPG Free Form.

ARCAD Transformer Field globally transforms fields with more meaningful names, types and sizes.