Zowe is designed to be an extensible tools platform. You can extend it to meet your needs or distribute the plug-ins to users who have already installed Zowe and want to introduce new functionality to it.
You can extend Zowe in the following ways:
1. Extend the Zowe Command Line Interface.
2. Add a REST API service to the API Mediation Layer.
3. Add an application plug-in to the Zowe Desktop.
4. Extend the Zowe Explorer.
Learn more and get started with the Extending documentation.
Building your product or extension on top of Zowe has many advantages! Here are a few:
Advanced Security - Zowe has multifactor authentication built in, ensuring your product keeps with modern security standards.
Modern DevOps practices - Automate your CI/CD pipeline with modern tools like Jenkins.
Aligned with new developers - The next generation of mainframe developers is using Zowe, and will be the ones who implement and use your extension.
Administered by the Open Mainframe Project, the Zowe Conformance Program gives users the confidence that when they use a product, app, or distribution that extends Zowe, they can expect a high level of common functionality, interoperability, and user experience.
As a vendor, getting a Zowe Conformance Badge for your application also ensures that your extension will continue to be supported as Zowe changes and grows.
Getting a Zowe Conformance Badge happens in 3 steps:
The current version of Zowe Conformance is ZOWE V2, which covers Zowe version 2 and later. The previous Zowe Conformance ZOWE V1 Program covers Zowe v1 version 1.9 and later, and the Zowe Conformance 2019 program covers Zowe version 1.0 through 1.8.
Learn more about the program at the Zowe Conformance Program website.