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Open Tools, Modern Workflows: A Next-Gen Mainframe Quiz

Mar 23, 2026

Modernization, Trivia

Open Tools Modern Workflows

Sonja Soderlund

Sonja Soderlund is an Oregon-based B2B freelance writer. Whether writing about mainframe computers, educational technology, or sustainable retail, she strives to bring clarity to complex issues. Connect with her or LinkedIn.

This week, our Planet Mainframe quiz continues the “Next-Gen Mainframe” theme. For decades, mainframe development operated in its own world—but as the broader industry converged on open-source tooling, Git-based collaboration, and cloud-style DevOps pipelines, the mainframe ecosystem began to adapt.

Projects like Zowe, hosted by the Open Mainframe Project, aim to bridge traditional z/OS environments with the tools and workflows developers already use across distributed systems. The result is a growing “next-gen mainframe” story in which APIs, command-line tooling, open standards, and modern IDEs play a larger role in how developers build and manage applications.

Take our quiz, and see how much you know about this mainframe story!

1. Open Mainframe Project operates under which larger umbrella organization?

 
 
 
 

2. Which major technology event marked the formal launch of the Zowe project in 2018?

 
 
 
 

3. Which companies were among the original creators of Zowe?

 
 
 
 

4. Which broader industry goal do initiatives like Zowe support in the mainframe ecosystem?

 
 
 
 

5. Which popular code editor is most commonly associated with Zowe extensions?

 
 
 
 

6. Which Zowe component allows developers to interact with z/OS datasets, jobs, and services through terminal-style commands?

 
 
 
 

7. Which Zowe component provides developers with a graphical interface for browning and managing z/OS resources directly within Visual Studio Code?

 
 
 
 

8. Which type of interface does Zowe use to make z/OS services accessible to modern applications?

 
 
 
 

9. Zowe’s API Mediation Layer is designed to provide which capability for enterprise applications?

 
 
 
 

10. How do open mainframe tools such as Zowe most directly support hybrid cloud development strategies?

 
 
 
 

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