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CA releases mainframe software developer tools

By Alex Goldman on August 11, 2009 9:00 AM

CA really means to keep the mainframe alive into the next century, according to Mark Combs, CA (NASDAQ: CA) senior vice president of research and development for the mainframe business unit.

"Our mainframe 2.0 initiative represents a major investment by CA," Combs told InternetNews.com. "We plan to bring the mainframe into the twenty-first century and into the twenty-second century. We believe that the mainframe will be around for a very long time."

Earlier this year, CA announced an initiative that will ensure that more college students study the mainframe.

Today, CA released significant upgrades to its CA InterTest Batch and CA InterTest for CICS products, delivering a GUI for them. "They are interactive debugging tools that allow developers to trace the flow of programs. They enable developers to step through the program and to set break points."

The goal is to make debugging easier, especially for young people. "This is a productivity enhancer for experienced people, but it is near-critical for people who do not have the background from 30 years of mainframe experience," said Combs.

The products run on Eclipse, an open source development platform that CA has invested in.

CA also updated its SymDump product. "On the mainframe, a developer might get a strange error message, a near unintelligible core dump written in machine language," said Combs. "SymDump gives information to the programmer about what's really going on."

He added that managers as well as developers will see clear benefits from all the new software. "For the manager, this makes it easy for them to hire someone out of college with a Computer Science degree and put them to work on a mainframe. In addition, everyone, no matter their experience level, will enjoy better productivity."

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