Perhaps, to build software developed for a z/OS® runtime platform, you use either a suite of job control languages (JCL), or a combination of JCL and code written in a scripting language like REXX. Commonly, a development team uses a mixture of software for z/OS and software for other distributed platforms, especially when that team uses z/OS functionality on a Web-based client.
Perhaps, when you build on a distributed platform, you use scripting languages like MAKE or Ant to drive a build.
Rational Team Concert for System z introduces the Antz scripting language, which offers all of the functionality and syntax of Ant, but with extensions for building on a z/OS system. With Antz, you can manipulate partitioned data set extended (PDSE) members and invoke z/OS compilers so that you can unify your builds under a single scripting language.
To drive a z/OS platform build with Antz, the Rational Team Concert for System z source control component must capture and maintain many pieces of supporting information. The topics in this Managing change and release with rational Team Concert for System z section introduce this peripheral information and how it is captured and maintained, along with an introduction to more fundamental source control component constructs that Rational Team Concert for System z uses to organize z/OS artifacts. With Antz, much like with other source control component products–IBM's SCLM, for example–you specify all of this information once, and then it can be continuously used by developers or other build administrators when they build.