Bridging the Gap: How Rocket’s PRO/JCL Makes JCL Management Easier for Next-Gen Developers
November 10, 2022
Businesses’ modernization plans have accelerated over the last few years. Fueled by increased customer demands and market competition, the adoption of automation and new-age methodologies, like DevOps and CI/CD testing, has become popular among businesses looking to remain competitive in today’s markets.
The growing popularity of modern cloud technologies has created skills gaps for organizations continuing to leverage the reliability, resilience and security of mainframe infrastructure. As seasoned employees head into retirement, taking their mainframe knowledge with them, the next generation of IT professionals—more of whom lack mainframe familiarity—are getting ready to take their place. These new professionals must learn job control language (JCL), REXX, COBOL, and more. Businesses looking to bridge the knowledge gap have turned to mainframe modernization efforts, with 45% of IT professionals citing it as a top method for businesses to maintain talent pipelines, according to Rocket Software’s 2022 survey report: The State of the Mainframe.
Simplifying JCL With Rocket’s PRO/JCL Software
In June, Rocket Software released its latest version of PRO/JCL with a new interface through VS Code® extension, Enhanced Directed Execution to include options for sending PROCs and PARMLIBs to remote LPARS, and improved visibility for NODE and LPAR in the primary panel. Enhancements to the software have increased and improved connectivity and flexibility created through PRO/JCL, simplifying the rigidly positional complexities of JCL for next-gen developers.
With Pro/JCL, teams can:
- Manage JCL directly within their favorite integrated development environment (IDE) for seamless DevOps integration
- Enhance accuracy with scheduler integrations, such as Zeke, ESP, Control-M and others
- Integrate directly with the PRO/JCL RESTful web service API for automated JCL validation
- Eliminate human error and time wasted by leveraging automated JCL standards across the entire JCL lifecycle
Having the tools and flexibility, along with the ability to maintain context in an IDE, increases next-gen developers’ ability to manage JCL with quality, velocity and efficiency. Improving developers’ productivity enhances the development and delivery of a company’s products, reducing overall costs and improving customer retention.
The Introduction of PRO/JCL through VS Code Marketplace
On the heels of the latest PRO/JCL release, last week, Rocket also announced that the solution is now available through the VS Code Marketplace, a platform that includes thousands of extensions supporting hundreds of programming languages and tasks. With PRO/JCL now available on the popular VS Code Marketplace, developers unfamiliar with mainframe technology can leverage the software to quickly adapt to a business’s JCL management processes—further mitigating skills gaps and empowering newer developers to bring value to the company immediately.
As the mainframe continues to be essential to business operations, the ability to evolve mission-critical environments like JCL to improve software development and time to market is more important than ever. Considering the steep learning curve for writing and managing JCL, it’s imperative to equip next-gen developers with tools that make it easy to get the job done. Rocket PRO/JCL’s innovative features and seamless IDE integrations give development teams the tools and flexibility to create an error-free, standardized and optimized JCL ecosystem.
To find out more about how Rocket Software’s PRO/JCL features and integrations can help simplify the management of your JCL environment, visit the PRO/JCL page.
