Overview

Learn about what is IBM® watsonx Code Assistant for Z Refactoring Assistant, its key features, and the benefits it offers.

What is Z Refactoring Assistant?

In the journey to application modernization and refactoring, loosely coupled services can provide small and focused functionality through a published interface. Services help enterprises to adapt to modern software design and accelerate their application development with more flexibility.

Z Refactoring Assistant is a tool that helps developers identify parts of an application to refactor into modular and reusable services. As a strategic enabler for incremental modernization, Z Refactoring Assistant can help IBM Z® customers succeed in small modernization efforts and drive wider modernization in place. It can be integrated into a cycle to boost application modernization and refactoring, by leveraging the existing IBM Z solutions, such as IBM Application Discovery and Delivery Intelligence for IBM Z (IBM ADDI) and IBM Developer for z/OS® (IDz).

Figure 1. Modernization & Refactoring Cycle
The image shows the architectural diagram in Understand and Refactor phases.

Key features and benefits

The key features and benefits of Z Refactoring Assistant are as follows:
  • Uses code analysis algorithms to modernize COBOL applications.
  • Supports the process of extracting business services from existing monolithic applications, by helping developers to identify and isolate business logic in an assisted way.
  • Fills the capability gap between Application Discovery analysis in IBM ADDI, and coding and modernizing in IDz or Wazi.
  • Provides small teams with the technology to start with small, incremental, and practical modernization use cases.