Further Reading — Chapter 40: COBOL and the Modern Stack

Books

  • Modernizing Enterprise COBOL Applications — IBM Redbooks. Covers z/OS Connect, API enablement, CI/CD for COBOL, and cloud strategies.

  • Docker Deep Dive by Nigel Poulton — Not COBOL-specific, but the definitive guide to Docker concepts that apply directly to containerizing COBOL.

  • Kubernetes Up and Running by Brendan Burns et al. — Essential Kubernetes concepts for deploying containerized COBOL services.

IBM Documentation

  • Zowe Documentation (https://docs.zowe.org/) — Complete documentation for Zowe CLI, Zowe Explorer, and API Mediation Layer.

  • IBM Dependency Based Build (DBB) — https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/dbb — Build automation for z/OS that understands COBOL dependencies.

  • IBM Wazi — https://www.ibm.com/products/wazi — Cloud-native z/OS development and testing environments.

  • Ansible for z/OS — https://galaxy.ansible.com/ibm/ibm_zos_core — Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z.

Online Resources

  • Open Mainframe Project (https://www.openmainframeproject.org/) — Home of Zowe, COBOL-Check, and other open-source mainframe tools.

  • COBOL-Check (https://github.com/openmainframeproject/cobol-check) — Unit testing framework for COBOL with documentation and examples.

  • GnuCOBOL (https://gnucobol.sourceforge.io/) — Open-source COBOL compiler for Linux, essential for containerization.

  • IBM Developer: Mainframe (https://developer.ibm.com/components/ibm-z/) — Tutorials, code patterns, and community resources.

Tools

  • Docker (https://www.docker.com/) — Container runtime for building and running COBOL containers.
  • Kubernetes (https://kubernetes.io/) — Container orchestration for production deployments.
  • GitHub Actions (https://github.com/features/actions) — CI/CD platform with free tier for public repositories.
  • Jenkins (https://www.jenkins.io/) — CI/CD server with extensive z/OS plugin ecosystem.
  • VS Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/) — Modern IDE with COBOL extensions.
  • Galasa (https://galasa.dev/) — Integration testing framework for mainframe applications.

Cloud Platforms

  • AWS Mainframe Modernization — https://aws.amazon.com/mainframe-modernization/
  • Azure Mainframe Migration — https://azure.microsoft.com/solutions/mainframe-migration/
  • IBM Z as a Service — https://www.ibm.com/z/cloud

Conference Talks

  • SHARE Conference — Annual mainframe conference with sessions on DevOps, CI/CD, and modernization for COBOL. Past presentations available online.
  • Open Mainframe Summit — Linux Foundation event focusing on open-source mainframe tools.