CA Brightside Community Edition is a free and fully functional command-line interface to IBM z/OS systems and applications. It exposes a number of existing APIs as a set of bright commands designed for use in open-system automation scripts and applications.
After you download CA Brightside Community Edition and install it on your laptop or workstation, you’ll want to:
- Ensure connectivity to your data and APIs on the Mainframe
- Set up CA Brightside profiles for the Mainframe APIs that you are going to use
Step 1: Ensure availability and access to Mainframe APIs
If you are a Mainframe developer actively working on a project, it is possible that you already have some or all of the required access to work with the CA Brightside. You should still verify that you have access to the right APIs and that the required subsystems have been configured.
If you are just getting started with z/OS®, use the template below to create a request for your system administrator to grant you access to the Mainframe APIs:
Hi, I <your_user_name> need access to z/OSMF REST APIs on <system_name>.
More specifically, I need access to the console, TSO, files, and Jobs z/OSMF REST APIs.
This is for access to z/OSMF from the CA Brightside CLI.
You can use <other_user_name> as a model ID.
The following security profiles are required: <profile_1, profile_2, profile_3>
Please set my maximum region size to 65536 KB
Thank you!
If you are the first one in the organization to use CA Brightside on z/OS, it is best to set up time with your system administrator and introduce the command line interface and how you plan to use it. You can also forward information about z/OSMF configuration described in CA Brightside Help: z/OSMF Configuration Overview. This may save you some troubleshooting time later on.
Step 2: Set up CA Brightside profiles for the Mainframe APIs that you are going to use
CA Brightside securely stores your credentials and hosts information on your local machine, making it easier to create and run automation scripts that target the Mainframe.
Setting up local profiles is a one-time process. Details of the steps vary depending on the operating system that you use. MacOS, for example, uses the OSX Keychain to store sensitive information.
Mike Bauer, the Product Owner for CA Brightside, created the following handy video that describes the steps for creating a local z/OSMF profile on your machine:
Depending on the use case mentioned you will need to create additional profiles for additional command groups (Db2, CA Endevor®, TSO, etc.).
Below is a quick cheat-sheet and template to help you with extending your distributed development to target z/OS applications. It summarizes z/OS permissions required for the most common use cases and highlights profiles that you will need for each of the main use cases.
| Use Case | What You Need | CA Brightside Profile |
| Connect to z/OS |
|
|
|
z/OSMF API is configured and you can access your system through z/OSMF API |
z/OSMF profile |
| Run Console commands | z/OSMF API is configured and you can access your system through z/OSMF API | z/OSMF profile |
| Run TSO commands |
z/OSMF API is configured and you can access your system through z/OSMF API |
|
| Provision IBM CICS test environments |
You need access to both the APIs and the template. |
z/OSMF profile |
| Edit and copy datasets (PDS/PS/VSAM) |
|
CA File Master Plus profile |
| Work with source code in CA Endevor SCM, build and deploy Endevor modules |
|
|
| Run SQL queries on IBM® Db2®, run stored procedures on IBM Db2, export tables from IBM Db2 |
|
IBM Db2 profile |
All profile commands use the following structure:
> bright profiles create <profile_type> <options>
You can learn more about the profiles by consulting the product help documentation. For example, to learn more about TSO profile you can type the following:
> bright profiles create tso-profile –help
CA Brightside Community Edition ships with plugins that allow you to create the following profiles:
| Profile Type | Description |
| zosmf profile | Local CA Brightside profile for z/OSMFtso-profile |
| tso-profile | Local CA Brightside profile for z/OS TSO/E User Profile |
| db2-profile | Local CA Brightside profile for IBM Db2 |
| fmp-profile | Local CA Brightside profile for CA File Master Plus |
| endevor-profile | Local CA Brightisde profile for CA Endevor SCM |
| location-profile | Optional profile for CA Endevor SCM that you can use to specify parameters of the target CA Endevor SCM repository (Env, system, subsystem, CCID etc.) |
This two-step process will help you configure your CA Brightside client faster.
Already connected to the Mainframe and accessing your first data set? Share your feedback on the CA Brightside Slack channel.
Haven’t downloaded CA Brightside Community Edition? Click here.