Tracing Data Lineage in Explore

A Data Lineage project lets you explore a legacy IBM application—COBOL, RPG, PL/I, and related batch programs—using a read-only view built from your ingested source code. The same tabs and lineage workflows apply across supported languages.

Who does what

You do not edit source code inside Data Lineage; you discover and trace how the system works.

Deterministic vs AI content

Deterministic (Explore) — Everything in the six Explore tabs comes from parsing: grids, counts, SQL text, variable trees, job steps, file and data set links. The same project always shows the same facts until the underlying ingestion is refreshed.

AI (Dashboard and Summary actions) — Ask a Lineage Question lives on the dashboard only. Summary and Tell Me More appear on module, variable, and job detail views. AI-generated text may differ when you run it again; links inside AI answers still point to deterministic Explore items.

Recently asked questions — Under the Ask a Lineage Question box on the dashboard, Recently asked questions lists prompts you asked in this browser. That history is local to your browser, not shared across users or devices.

What goes into a project

Zengines parses legacy program source (COBOL, RPG, PL/I, and related), embedded SQL, job languages (JCL on z/OS; CL, CLLE, and related on IBM i), copybooks and shared layouts, and Db2-style schema metadata. Customer Success coordinates what your team supplies and how it is ingested—you do not upload source through the Data Lineage UI yourself.

Db2 schema metadata (SYSCOLUMNS.csv)

SYSCOLUMNS.csv is ingested separately from program source. It tells Zengines about Db2 tables and columns (IBM SYSCOLUMNS-style export).

• Customer Success uploads schema metadata as part of project setup
• One header row, then one row per column; no blank lines between rows
• COLUMN_COMMENT should carry short business meanings (helpful for architects and analysts tracing field semantics)

Zengines provides queries against the Db2 SYSCOLUMNS catalog to extract everything required for this file. Customer Success can provide those queries if your team needs to generate the export.

Required header columns:

TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME, ORDINAL_POSITION, COLUMN_DEFAULT, IS_NULLABLE, DATA_TYPE, CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH, CHARACTER_OCTET_LENGTH, NUMERIC_PRECISION, NUMERIC_SCALE, DATETIME_PRECISION, CHARACTER_SET_NAME, COLLATION_NAME, COLUMN_CONSTRAINT_TYPE, COLUMN_CONSTRAINT_NAME, COLUMN_CONSTRAINT_EXPRESSION, COLUMN_CONSTRAINT_TABLE_REFERENCE, COLUMN_CONSTRAINT_COLUMN_REFERENCE, COLUMN_CONSTRAINT_COLUMN_REFERENCE_CONSTRAINT_NAME, EXTRA, PRIVILEGES, COLUMN_COMMENT

Job languages and file lineage

Job languages are the batch control scripts that tell the system which programs run and which files or data sets they use—for example JCL on z/OS and CL / CLLE on IBM i.

Jobs are not strictly required to create a project, but including job language sources gives the best results:

• Files tab and file sections on modules populate when job definitions link programs to files and data sets
• Jobs tab shows steps, modules, and connections into variables that represent file records

SQL, copybooks, and program structure

Embedded SQL drives Tables and Fields lineage. Copybooks, DCLGEN, and language-specific layouts define structures that appear under Variables and in AI summaries.

Jobs optional, but recommended

You can open and use a project without job language sources, but table-to-file research is limited until jobs and file names are ingested. Plan to include JCL, CL, or related job definitions when you care about batch flows, extracts, and file in/out on modules.