Create an assessment

This page describes how to upload your applications to Mainframe Assessment Tool and perform an assessment of the assets that Mainframe Assessment Tool discovers in the uploaded codebase.

Use Mainframe Assessment Tool to assess mainframe applications that are implemented in programming languages, such as COBOL. You can also gather detailed AI-generated insights about each component in your mainframe application. Mainframe Assessment Tool lets you perform an assessment on your own. Alternatively, request assistance from a Google Cloud customer engineer.

Before you begin

To prepare for your assessment, make sure that you have completed the following prerequisites:

Upload your mainframe application files to Mainframe Assessment Tool

To upload the application files to Mainframe Assessment Tool, follow these steps:

  1. Create a zip file containing all the applications that you want to migrate.

    Mainframe Assessment Tool supports only zip files with a maximum size of 400 MB. If your application zip file is larger than 400 MB, then consider splitting the file into smaller zip files based on business domains and upload a zip file for each domain.

    • COBOL programs (cob and cbl)
    • COBOL copybooks (inc and cpy)
    • Easytrieve programs (ezt)
    • HLASM programs (asm)
    • JCL jobs (jcl)
    • JCL procedures (proc)
    • JCL includes
    • JCL card data (ctl)
    • RPG/RPGLE programs (rpg and rpgle)
    • RPG/RPGLE include files (rpginc and rpgleinc)

    Don't include binaries and other non-source files in the zip file.

  2. To upload the zip file to Mainframe Assessment Tool, follow these steps:

    1. To open Mainframe Assessment Tool on your local machine, open a web browser window and go to http://localhost:PORT.

      Replace PORT with the port number you used on your local machine for the tunneled connection to the Mainframe Assessment Tool.

    2. On the Home page, click Create assessment.

    3. For name, enter a name.

    4. Optional: For Description, enter a description for the assessment.

    5. To upload a zip file, click Select file. The file browser opens. Select a zip file that you want to upload. You can upload only one file at a time.

    6. Click Next.

  3. To configure AI-generated insights, follow these steps:

    1. To generate paragraph-level summaries for COBOL code, select Detailed summaries. By default, this option is selected.

    2. To generate test cases for the assessment specifications generated by Gemini, select Test cases. By default, this option is not selected.

    3. To generate code samples that translate mainframe languages to Python, Java, C#, and SQL, select Code suggestions. By default, this option is not selected.

    4. For Tech stack hints, enter text that helps Gemini generate code for a specific tech stack. For example, enter Spring Boot and MySQL.

    5. Click Next.

  4. Optional: To add one or more domains that represent a distinct area of functionality, click Add domain.

    This information is used for automated assignment, and lets you filter and review results based on specific contexts after the assessment is complete.

  5. Click Next.

  6. Click Create assessment.

After you upload the zip file, Mainframe Assessment Tool unpacks and processes the source code. The Assessments page displays a new entry in the table for each discovered asset, showing its assessment status.

  • Pending: assessment is waiting its turn.
  • In Progress: analysis is in progress.
  • Analyzed: assessment has been completed.
  • Failed: the assessment didn't complete.

If you see errors after importing your file, you can review the error message directly in Mainframe Assessment Tool.

To view more details about the assessment progress for an item, click the reference ID next to it in the table. This opens a page that shows all the steps together with the status.

What's next