BOSTON, MA – October 29, 2025 – Zengines, the AI-powered data migration and data lineage platform, announces expanded support for RPG (Report Program Generator) language in its Data Lineage product. Organizations running IBM i (AS/400) systems can now rapidly analyze legacy RPG code alongside COBOL, dramatically accelerating modernization initiatives while reducing dependency on scarce programming expertise.
Breaking Through the RPG "Black Box"
Many enterprises still rely on mission-critical applications written in RPG decades ago, creating what Zengines calls the "black box" problem – legacy technology where business logic, data flows, and requirements are locked away in legacy code with little to no documentation. As companies undertake digital transformation and cloud migration initiatives, understanding these legacy systems has become a critical bottleneck.
The challenge with RPG is particularly acute. While COBOL's descriptive, English-like syntax makes it easier to "read," RPG's fixed-format column specifications and cryptic operation codes require developers to decode what goes in which column while tracing through numbered indicators to follow the logic. This complexity, combined with a shrinking pool of RPG expertise, makes understanding these systems even more critical—and difficult—than their COBOL counterparts.
"The majority of our enterprise customers are running legacy technology across multiple platforms – both mainframe COBOL environments and IBM i systems with RPG code," said Caitlyn Truong, CEO of Zengines. "By expanding our support to include RPG alongside COBOL, we can now address the full spectrum of legacy code challenges these organizations face. This means our customers can leverage a single AI-powered platform to comprehensively analyze, understand and modernize their legacy technology estate, rather than cobbling together multiple point solutions or relying on increasingly scarce programming expertise across different languages and systems."
Minutes, Not Months: AI-Powered Legacy Code Analysis
The enhanced Zengines Data Lineage platform automatically ingests RPG code, job schedulers, and related artifacts to deliver:
- Interactive data lineage visualization – Graphical representation of data paths, sources, and hard-coded values
- Comprehensive code intelligence – Relationships between modules, tables, fields, variables, and files
- Business logic extraction – Calculation logic, branching conditions, and transformation rules
- Actionable insights – Tables and fields inventory, profiling, and impact analysis
This capability is critical for organizations navigating system replacements, M&A integrations, compliance initiatives, and technology modernization programs where understanding legacy RPG logic is essential for de-risking implementations.
Real-World Impact: From Guesswork to Precision
Managing and modernizing legacy systems break down when teams lack complete understanding of existing logic. Migrations stall when teams cannot achieve functional coverage or resolve test failures. When validating new systems against legacy outputs, discrepancies inevitably emerge – but without understanding why the old system produces specific results, teams cannot effectively test, replicate, or improve functionality.
"Our customers use Zengines to reverse-engineer business requirements from legacy code," added Truong. "When a new system returns a different result for an interest calculation compared to that of the 40-year-old RPG program, teams need to understand the original logic to make informed decisions about what to preserve and what to update. That's the power of shining a light into the black box."
Immediate Availability
RPG parsing capability is now available on Zengines Data Lineage platform. Organizations can analyze both COBOL and RPG codebases within a single integrated platform.
About Zengines
Zengines is a technology company that transforms how organizations handle data migrations and modernization inititatives. Zengines serves business analysts, developers, and transformation leaders who need to map, change, and move data across systems. With deep expertise in AI, data migration, and legacy systems, Zengines helps organizations reduce time, cost, and risk associated with their most challenging data initiatives.
Media Contact:
Todd Stone
President, Zengines
todd@zengines.ai