Databorough Announces X-Analysis Lite

X-Analysis Lite offers the industry’s most powerful cross referencing at budget prices

Toronto, Canada -- Thursday, 03 December 2009, -- Databorough, a leading vendor of tools for IBM i, today announced a cut-down version of X-Analysis its flagship product, the recognized world leader in analysis, documentation, design recovery and reengineering tools for system i.

X-Analysis Lite is Databorough’s response to the demand from the broad community of smaller IBM i shops that love the X-Analysis functionality, but don’t have budgets that stretch to the enterprise versions of the product. Along with a set of proven and powerful analysis features, the Lite package includes three of the most popular and productive features from the enterprise versions of X-Analysis. They are: Application Mapping, Variable Tracing Technology, and Interactive Graphical Diagramming, and provide critical functionality to thousands of RPG and COBOL developers using X-Analysis 8 on IBM i worldwide. X-Analysis Lite also comes with bi-directional interfaces to IBM’s WDSc and RDi products, as well as stand-alone versions for traditional SEU users. An introduction discount for upgrades from Hawkeye is available.

IBM is now hosting a configuration of the Lite on the IBM Enterprise Modernization Sandbox for i, see:

IBM Enterprise Modernization for System i: Discover and understand RPG applications with X-Analysis

Application Mapping builds a complete map of an entire application and stores it in a readable DB2/400 database library. All objects are cross referenced first, and then every single source member of any type is parsed and mapped down to individual variables and how they relate to other variables, not just fields. A number of X-Analysis users, ISV’s, and partners have already developed their own add-ons and services using the Application Map Repository.

Variable Tracing Technology uses the Application Map to programmatically trace variables and fields across and entire system. This means that impact analysis for changes can be done for multiple levels, or variants of a field or variable, in a single inquiry. This unique to X-Analysis feature, has saved many companies thousands of man hours in analysis time. See our Case Studies for details. It is also one of the key features that prompts users of legacy tools such as Hawkeye to upgrade.

Interactive Graphical Diagramming is the most commonly used and popular feature of the X-Analysis suite. Developers, analysts and support teams can see structure and process in interactive, graphical color-coded diagrams. Drill down capability into color coded source browsing and navigation through diagrams across the entire application. “GPS for Legacy Applications!” as one user described it.

Running over RPGII/III/IV/Free, CL and COBOL on IBM i X-Analysis Lite is available direct from Databorough or through our extensive partner network.

Additional information is available on the Web at http://www.databorough.com/lite

About Databorough

Databorough Ltd. is a leading vendor of innovative software tools enhancing IBM i legacy applications and taking them into a 21^st century environment.

Databorough’s software is developed and maintained by development teams in Canada, UK, France and India. It is at work, worldwide, in companies including market leaders in the manufacturing, distribution, retail, services and financial and application software sectors.

Databorough is headquartered in Weybridge, near London, United Kingdom. The company’s main North American office is in Toronto, Canada and its main R&D centre is in Lucknow, India.

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All product and company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

CONTACTS:

Databorough:
Stuart Milligan, Tel: (917) 267-7523
email: stuartm@databorough.com

How much RPG application code is still relevant & unique

This is the most important question that many CIO's who have as/400 applications are asking themselves. Why are they asking this?

Cost and risk. It costs a lot more money to write your own applications in house than it does generally to buy one off the shelf. The reason being that you have to hire people to write and maintain the code. That's where the risk comes in. If i lose the person who wrote the code then i also potentially impact my ability to enhance and support that same code at the same costs and quality.

Since the introduction of the as/400 in 1988 a lot of custom code has been written on the platform in RPG. The fact that the majority of this code is still around and in use, is testament toRPG itself which makes it possible for analysts with business knowledge, to write a large portion of the code.

In helping customers worldwide to analyse and re-engineer their RPG applications over the last 25 years Databorough has accrued a fairly unique knowledge of the size and characteristics of the this code base in general. we estimate that there is at least one billion lines of custom code in existence on as/400's worldwide.

Before any CIO can make an informed decision on what application strategy to adopt: rewrite, modernize, replace, exactly how much of this code is still relevant and unique to the business must be known. This is in terms of business rules, data model design and flow/process logic. Extracting this information quantitatively, narrating it and documenting it on a million lines ofRPG code that has been written over 20 years, would take 5 people who would need excellentRPG and analysis skills, at least one year working full time.

That's at least half a million dollars direct cost. That is of course if there were enough such people available to do this work over and above ongoing support and maintenance demands on these same applications.

Over the last decade Databorough has been enhancing X-Analysis to the point where it can now automatically extract, narrate and document business rules, data models and process/flow logic for entire systems. Some of the systems X-Analysis runs over currently have in excess of 50 million lines of code, some as little as half a million. The difference in extraction time is usually a couple of hours.

The added benefit is that these extracted specifications can then be used to map to off-the shelf apps, as input specs for rewriting the unique and relevant parts, and even to automatically re-engineer the existing code where necessary.

This might make it clearer as to why IBM promote and use X-Analysis themselves in conjunction with their own tools, a few links to this are detailed below. There are also a few of our partners and independent agents who are offering modernization assessment services which help start this process. Some of these include, Sirius, ADC-AustinTech, IBM Global Services, and Oxford International.

So CIO's don't need to guess or accept others guesswork. They can make these critical decisions on provable, current, accurate and quantifiable information.

Here are a couple of useful links:

X-Analysis Design Recovery

IBM Redbook on X-Analysis

IBM Modernisation Strategy

Modernization Concepts Guide

Stuart