Business Logic Extraction

Description:

This product includes X-Analysis Professional, and automates the the extraction of explicit business rules, relational data models and user interface design models spread entangled in complex legacy RPG or COBOL code. This extrication might otherwise take thousands of man hours to derive manually. The outputs can be viewed and used by architects, analysts programmers and non-system-experts with the X-Analysis Eclipse-based Client to understand and document the core, reusable designs of the legacy application.

These designs are stored as explicit definitions in the X-Analysis repository which can then generated as documentation in MS Excel, MS Word, MS Visio, or exported into industry standard formats such as UML and DDL, for reuse with other mainstream modeling products such as; MyEclipseBlue, Rational Software Architect, Borland Together, Erwin Modeler. The design constructs extracted include:

The Relational Data Model

X-Analysis is unique in that it automatically derives an explicit physical & logical data model by analyzing both the actual data contents and all programs that use this data to verify the existence of any cross-file relationships. These potential relationships are then verified by performing an integrity check to ensure that all data from the dependant file does indeed validly reference data records from the owning file.

A complete data model accurately describing all possible relationships between each file is essential for productive maintenance and development work.

Such a model also provides the foundation upon which critical data administration tasks such as referential integrity testing, and test data extraction can be automated. See X-Data for more information.

Business Rule Logic

The Business Logic of an application makes the application function uniquely in the company that uses the application. The Business Rules implicit in the data and process models of an application exposed by Data Modeling, but does not entirely account for the vast amount of business logic that is buried inside the source code of the programs. One of the functions of the Design Recovery Set is identifying and indexing this logic automatically from individual programs or parts of the entire system. The business logic can then be analyzed and documented with the powerful and interactive source browser integrated with X-Analysis, and exported and documented in MS Word or Visio. The indexed rule logic is also accessible in the well documented X-Analysis database for programmatic reuse if applicable.

User Interface Design Recovery

The screens of a legacy application are a classic example where the design is useful in a modernization context, and the code is not. All modern IDE’s provide powerful UI development tools. Modern UI standards and preferences for style and technology also vary from project to project. The sheer number of screens in a legacy application presents a logistical problem in recreating them manually, even with the cleverest developers and best tooling.

Screen designs of legacy applications are not just about look and feel, there are attributes, and logic embedded which from a design point of view is relevant, no matter what technology being used to implement them. These are:

• Formats/Layouts
• Actions
• Fields/Files/Attributes
• Data Model Mapping

Naturally, it will be desirable to redesign some UI’s completely. For those programs and screens where this is not the case, the design, and mapping information can be used directly in the new version of the application, even though the UI code has been discarded