Bank of Z

Deploying Bank of Z

Deploying Bank of Z provisions a complete application environment on z/OS, including CICS, IMS, z/OS Connect, a Liberty frontend server, and all application data. The process is fully automated once you have cloned the repository and configured it for your environment.

Choose a deployment workflow

Bank of Z supports three deployment workflows. All three run the same deployment stages and produce the same deployed environment.

Direct USS

Connect directly to z/OS by using SSH, clone the repository, and run the deployment scripts manually. This is the most straightforward option and requires no additional tooling beyond SSH and Git.

→ Deploy Using Direct USS Access

Zowe CLI

Clone the repository to your local machine, then use the provided Zowe CLI scripts to clone your current GitHub branch to z/OS USS and run the deployment scripts automatically. No SSH access to USS is required.

Note: The script clones your branch from GitHub on USS. Your branch must be pushed to the remote before running the script. Local commits that have not been pushed are not included.

→ Deploy Using Zowe CLI
→ Zowe CLI Setup

GRUB

Clone the repository to your local machine, then use GRUB to transfer your local branch directly to z/OS USS and run the deployment scripts automatically. No commit or push to a remote is required before deploying.

→ Deploy Using GRUB
→ GRUB Setup

Deployment stages overview

All three workflows run the same three stages, each stage is run as a subcommand of .setup/setup-common.sh.

Stage 1: Validate prerequisites

.setup/setup-common.sh validate-prereqs

Verifies that all required tools are installed on z/OS USS at the versions specified in config.yaml. This includes DBB, ZOAU, zconfig, Wazi Deploy, Java, Git, and network connectivity to GitHub.

Stage 2: Provision middleware

.setup/setup-common.sh environment

Provisions the complete application runtime from scratch. This stage is fully automated and performs the following in sequence:

  1. Stops any existing Bank of Z tasks (CICS, IMS, z/OS Connect, frontend)
  2. Cleans up existing application datasets
  3. Clones the IBM DBB accelerators repository from GitHub
  4. Copies the zBuilder build framework
  5. Creates Db2 database tables
  6. Provisions a CICS region using zconfig
  7. Provisions an IMS region using zconfig
  8. Creates IMS database objects
  9. Starts IMS Bank of Z message processing regions
  10. Creates and starts a z/OS Connect server
  11. Creates and starts a frontend Liberty server

Note: This stage requires a pre-existing Db2 subsystem (DBD1). All other middleware, including CICS, IMS, z/OS Connect, and the frontend server, is provisioned automatically.

Stage 3: Build and deploy

.setup/setup-common.sh install-bank-of-z

Builds the application from source and deploys the generated artifacts to the provisioned runtime:

  1. Runs a full DBB build for all application sources, including COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, BMS, Java, and z/OS Connect APIs.
  2. Packages the build outputs into a deployment archive
  3. Runs Wazi Deploy to deploy the archive to the CICS and IMS environments
  4. Populates Db2 with application test data
  5. Populates the IMS database with application test data

The initial build and deployment typically take approximately 15 to 20 minutes.

Incremental builds

After the initial deployment is complete, most day-to-day development can be performed using an incremental build and deploy instead of rebuilding the entire environment.

The incremental workflow rebuilds and deploys only the application components affected by your source code changes, reducing build time while preserving the existing runtime environment.

For more information, see: