Compare the Top Mainframe Application Development Software in China as of September 2026

What is Mainframe Application Development Software in China?

Mainframe application development software provides tools and environments for building, testing, deploying, and maintaining applications that run on mainframe systems. These platforms support programming languages commonly used in enterprise mainframes, such as COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, and Java, while enabling integration with modern development workflows. The software often includes debugging, code editing, workload management, source control, and automated testing capabilities to improve developer productivity and application reliability. Many solutions integrate with DevOps pipelines, cloud platforms, and API frameworks to help organizations modernize legacy systems and connect them with newer technologies. By supporting high-performance, large-scale transaction processing and mission-critical workloads, mainframe application development software remains essential for industries such as banking, insurance, government, and telecommunications. Compare and read user reviews of the best Mainframe Application Development software in China currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Rocket Visual COBOL

    Rocket Visual COBOL

    Rocket Software

    Rocket Visual COBOL is development and runtime environment that helps enterprises maintain, enhance, and modernize distributed COBOL applications. Rocket COBOL products standardize COBOL development alongside other languages, giving teams access to industry standard tools, flexible deployment options, and DevOps workflows. With Rocket Visual COBOL, engineering teams work with COBOL inindustry-standard dev tools such as Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, and Eclipse. It delivers advanced editing and debugging, continuous background compilation, and code analysis to speed development and onboarding. Its portable deployment platform enables risk-free moves to new infrastructure, supports cloud, container, and ARM environments, and integrates smoothly with APIs, .NET, and JVM. Rocket products also extend the value of large COBOL systems by making them easier to understand and evolve. GenAI powered insights help teams work confidently with COBOL and accelerate delivery.
  • 2
    IBM Developer for z/OS
    IBM Developer for z/OS Enterprise Edition is a comprehensive development toolset designed to modernize and accelerate application development on IBM z/OS systems. The platform provides Eclipse-based and Visual Studio Code-based tools for developing, debugging, and maintaining applications written in COBOL, PL/I, HLASM, REXX, Java, C/C++, and JCL. It supports modern DevOps practices by integrating with Git, CI/CD pipelines, automated build systems, and cloud-based development environments. IBM Developer for z/OS Enterprise Edition also includes advanced debugging capabilities across Eclipse, VS Code, and 3270 interfaces for flexible mainframe troubleshooting. The platform helps developers improve productivity through smart code navigation, syntax checking, data flow visualization, and automated deployment features. Additional tools such as ZCodeScan and code coverage analysis help organizations improve application quality and identify security vulnerabilities.
  • 3
    IBM App Discovery Delivery Intelligence
    IBM® Application Discovery and Delivery Intelligence (ADDI) is an analytical platform for application modernization. It uses cognitive technologies to analyze mainframe applications and quickly discover and understand the interdependencies of changes. Enhance mainframe applications rapidly to help drive revenue. Gain back your investment and start reaping returns quickly. Better understand application complexity to anticipate issues and cut app/development costs. Evolve systems and applications rapidly to take advantage of hybrid cloud. Accelerate your digital transformation with application insights that increase productivity and reduce risk. Use rapid analysis capabilities to discover the relationships between the components of your IBM z/OS® applications and understand the impact of potential change. Quickly find business rules, code snippets and APIs so that you can leverage them to support your business processes.
  • 4
    ibi FOCUS

    ibi FOCUS

    Cloud Software Group

    ibi™ FOCUS is the premier integrated development environment for IBM Z applications, directly supporting reporting, transaction processing, charting, interactive and batch processing, and universal file description. It provides rich data access with adapters for all major mainframe databases and file systems, and outputs to a wide variety of formats. Simplifying user and data access, FOCUS uses the same access language for all data structures, including universal JOIN and merge functionality. Reporting can be output in unparalleled data and graphic formats, such as HTML, PDF, PS, IDA (InDocument Analytics), XLSX, and PPTX. FOCUS creates a powerful and efficient runtime environment on IBM Z Systems, allowing users to leverage unique IBM Z functionality to maximize speed and cost savings. It delivers high levels of accuracy through the incorporation of hardware-level native arithmetic, with integrated decimal precision formats.
  • 5
    DataVantage

    DataVantage

    DataVantage

    ​DataVantage offers comprehensive data management solutions designed to secure and manage sensitive information across mainframe and distributed environments. Key offerings include DataVantage for IMS, Db2, and VSAM, which provide advanced data masking, editing, and extraction capabilities to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) during non-production processes. DataVantage DME (Data Masking Express) offers cost-effective, on-the-fly data masking for Db2, IMS, and VSAM environments, ensuring compliance without disrupting existing workflows. For distributed systems, DataVantage Global delivers robust data masking, obfuscation, and de-identification, supporting compliance and operational efficiency across platforms. Additionally, DataVantage Adviser simplifies COBOL file management post-mainframe rehosting or application modernization, enhancing data accessibility and editing.
  • 6
    AWS Transform
    AWS Transform is an agentic AI service from Amazon Web Services that automates and accelerates the modernization of legacy workloads, specifically .NET, mainframe, and VMware environments. Built on AWS’s migration and modernization experience, it deploys specialized AI agents to carry out tasks like assessment, code analysis, dependency mapping, refactoring, decomposition, validation, and planning, many of which run in parallel, to speed up large-scale transformations. Through a shared workspace and natural-language chat interface, cross-functional teams can collaborate, track progress, and manage modernization projects from end to end. AWS claims AWS Transform can make .NET apps port up to 4 times faster, greatly speed VMware configuration conversion, and compress mainframe migration timelines (years down to months), while also helping reduce legacy licensing, infrastructure cost, and ongoing maintenance expenses.
  • 7
    BMC AMI DevX

    BMC AMI DevX

    BMC Software

    BMC AMI DevX reimagines mainframe development by helping teams build better code with less friction, stronger flow, and a more modern developer experience. It unifies agile development, testing, debugging, promotion, and delivery in a mainframe-inclusive toolchain designed to support developers at every skill level. Teams can work directly in preferred environments such as Eclipse and VS Code, reducing context switching and simplifying onboarding for new developers. BMC AMI DevX helps streamline editing, build, source code management, approvals, and deployment through Code Pipeline, enabling concurrent development, faster releases, and more secure delivery. Code Insights gives developers real-time visibility into complex mainframe applications, helping visualize logic, dependencies, and monolithic code structures, while generative AI explanations support faster understanding of unfamiliar COBOL, JCL, PL/I, and Assembler code.
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