AI is rapidly transforming how businesses operate, emerging as a critical driver of innovation, efficiency, and competitive advantage. According to a June 2025 study by the IBM Institute for Business Value,
As clients adopt AI, solutions such as watsonx Code Assistant for Z are constantly evolving to meet the growing demand. The latest release of watsonx Code Assistant for Z introduces powerful new capabilities to help accelerate mainframe application modernization and enhance the developer experience.
With IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Z, developers can rapidly discover and document business rules in COBOL applications using Gen-AI to reduce business risk and accelerate modernization, while preserving core business logic.
Start by engaging with the chat interface to quickly locate relevant programs. Then, use a ranked list of variables that is automatically generated by watsonx Code Assistant for Z based on metadata, source code, and AI agents. The variables are prioritized by importance, factoring in characteristics such as usage frequency, context (such as screens or storage), and role (like in calculations or conditions). With the ranking and the AI generated descriptions, developers can quickly find the variable associated with the desired business logic.
Once the relevant variable is identified, developers receive an AI-generated draft of the associated business rule. This includes a summary of its purpose, logic, key terms, and variables. The draft can then be reviewed, refined, saved, and exported as needed. Watch a demo of this new capability here!
Code Generation is a new capability designed to accelerate development and modernization by generating COBOL code with natural language prompts and through in-line suggestions. This feature helps reduce manual effort, improve code quality, and boost developer productivity. Read more about this exciting new feature here!
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Generate COBOL code with in-line suggestions as you go: As developers work within existing COBOL programs, AI offers context-aware recommendations based on the surrounding code and other files in the workspace. These suggestions help maintain coding standards, improve code quality, and support newer developers by reducing the learning curve.
Expanding programming and natural language support for Code Explanation
IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Z now has a preview available for Assembler explanation, an important capability to accelerate understanding of mainframe applications. The natural language support for code explanation has also been expanded to include Dutch and Korean, in addition to English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, and German.