AppliedModernization32 min
AI-assisted code analysis and testing
How to use AI assistants to explain COBOL and JCL, draft documentation, support impact analysis and generate tests and test data — and how to verify the results, because fluent answers are not the same as correct ones.
What you will be able to do
- Write structured prompts that get useful explanations of COBOL and JCL
- Generate unit test cases and synthetic test data that respect packed decimal and EBCDIC
- Explain retrieval-augmented generation and why grounding improves answers
- Verify AI-assisted changes by compiling, testing, comparing outputs and human review
Lessons
- Explaining and documenting code with AIAI assistants can read a COBOL program or a JCL job and describe it in plain English, draft documentation and help you find what a change might touch. They are fast first…
- Generating unit tests and test dataAssistants can draft unit test cases and synthetic test data for COBOL programs, which saves time on the dull parts of testing. But mainframe data has traps — packed decimal,…
- Grounding, verification and failure modesAssistants give better answers when they are fed your site's own material, which is what retrieval-augmented generation does. Even then they make characteristic mistakes, so…
Track your progress and earn a certificate.
Free account, 15 quiz questions for this subject.