Automated Field Re-engineering

Description

The impact of changing a single field in a single physical file can often extend throughout many different components of an entire system. Programs, logical files, displays, menus and even related data files can all potentially be affected by such a change. Variables that are used to hold values passed from fields that are to be changed are affected, and variables related to these variables are also affected. These factors make the task of identifying the impact of even an individual change tedious and labour intensive.

X-Resize simplifies this task greatly with a comprehensive series of reports and drill-down inquiries over the entire system, to indicate the affected programs, files, displays, fields, variables etc. In addition there are exception reports for instances where the conversion of the display files cannot be completed automatically because of overlapping or screen size restrictions. Another very useful and powerful report is where conversions will cause the field to require resizing, such as for currency conversions where the number in the field will increase.

X-Resize has sophisticated search criteria including aliases, exclusion words, and predefined sets. This makes the task of identifying and reporting the impact of changes accurate and efficient. Once identified each field and file can be assessed in terms of where usage throughout the entire system. The full impact across the application is automatically discovered using the X-Analysis impact analysis capabilities – unmatched in power. All inferred references drilling down through programs and variable names, prefixes renames etc. are discovered by the tool.

Integrated Project Control

The product uses the concept of projects, where a project is defined by a unique description. All of the fields and variables that are to be resized or added to existing files are identified at this stage. This is achieved by two methods: firstly by using user-defined search criteria, and secondly by specifying the fields manually such as when adding a new field to a physical file. X-Resize then builds a list of all of the objects that are affected by the changes defined for the project. These lists are stored in a structured database and are used for tasks such as:

• Impact analysis reports and inquiries
• Project Management with Databorough’s X-Analysis Application Overview

These lists can also be used build an application area in Databorough’s documentation and analysis tool, X-Analysis. There is an option to export the relevant associated object lists to third party change management software such as Aldon.

Feature list:

• Instant & Detailed impact analysis for all instances: Fields, variables, programs, displays, reports, including aliases
• Integrated project control documentation with X-Analysis
• Totally automated source conversion for all object/source types
• Automated Bulk recompile
• Automated production merges
• Powerful impact and problem analysis features
• Automated data conversions