What is it?

ARCAD-Observer includes an application screen and printout generator with two objectives:

• Allow you to visualize the application screen or the spool files as they are used in the production environment,
• Allow you to generate « hard copies » that can then be included in a document.

How does it work?

The mechanism used by ARCAD-Observer is very simple: from a source member, one or several formats are selected. The system prepares the corresponding application screen or printout. From this simulated screen/printout, it is possible to move from field to field using the mouse and call the contextual field menu. From there the source code lines that access the selected field in the programs can be seen.

This is a valuable help for impact analysis where the starting point is often what the application users is actually dealing with, i.e. the application screen and the printouts.

For the documentation aspects, the generated hard copies simply need to be saved. They can then be accessed directly using an HTML page editor.