Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Hi,

I was listening to a conference synopsis and they used a term "Back-end Testing?" What is Back-end Testing, can anybody explain what it is?

In general - Back end testing in computer programming is testing the system that runs "behind the GUI applications". Back end testing can cover data integrity and validity, and performance as related to data.

Hope this helps.

Ok, Thanks. But how can we relate it to the mainframes?

If you want to go word by word - CICS can be termed as "GUI" for mainframe users. On the other hand, there are DB2 and IMS stored procedures which work well, usually, with JAVA front end screen - and there the testing of DB2, IMS, IMS-DB2 stored procedures, on mainframes, along with the front end Java screen  can be part of back-end testing.

I guess it depends on the process: take an ATM withdrawal transaction - front-end testing would be testing the software on the ATM and back-end testing would be the processing of that transaction once it has been passed to the mainframe (or wherever) for amending account balances, writing journals etc.

nicc wrote:I guess it depends on the process: take an ATM withdrawal transaction - front-end testing would be testing the software on the ATM and back-end testing would be the processing of that transaction once it has been passed to the mainframe (or wherever) for amending account balances, writing journals etc.

Thanks nicc and Anuj.

For one of our project, where the two teams one from Java and one from mainframes were involved. Testing for the mainframe was called as back-end testing, in the java team.