Planet Mainframe on LinkedIn
Planet Mainframe on LinkedIn
Planet Mainframe

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?

 
 
 
 

1 Comment

  1. Rajesh Ramachandran
    Rajesh Ramachandran on Mar 23, 2026 at 10:05 pm

    I am interested in how ZOWE is helping mainframe applications/workloads or jobs migrate to modern development ecosystems

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Sign up to receive the latest mainframe information

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
SHARE Pittsburgh 2026 - Register Now

Recently Published

Read More

A Clarion Call for the Mainframe Community

A Clarion Call for the Mainframe Community

by

GSE Nordic Conference 2026, HelsinkiEnergy, insight, innovation After the success of the 2025 event in Gothenburg, the 2026 GSE Nordic conference continued a similar vein and delivered a packed and varied programme - spanning modern mainframe technology, AI...

❓Everything CICS Trivia

❓Everything CICS Trivia

by

While most people you know probably haven’t even heard of CICS, anyone that banks, travels, or does business in the modern world has benefited from this cornerstone of enterprise transaction processing. Evolving alongside changes in hardware, operating systems,...

❓Windows Meets the Mainframe

❓Windows Meets the Mainframe

by

When Microsoft Windows emerged in the 1980s, it represented a very different vision of computing from the centralized, highly structured world of the mainframe. Windows powered the rise of personal computers and client-server systems, while mainframes continued...