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With the arrival of new technologies and the heterogeneity of the
environments they create, the need for cross-platform transparency is more
and more crucial, since this is the vital information that will allow perfect
synchronization of differing development teams.
Having this information completely up to date and in real time
will allow:
- Improving the effectiveness of impact analyses
- Automating application documentation processes
- Increasing application reliability during change phases
The ARCAD Solution
In ARCAD’s methodology, the Repository not only brings together all
software components, it also retrieves all dependencies between components,
or cross-references.
The OS/400 application already provides a good number of cross-references,
but they are incomplete and therefore inadequate. At ARCAD, we
have rounded out this information trove with source-code analyses.
All the relationships between programs, files, commands, menus,
queries, etc. are catalogued. The system goes all the way to the
field level (databases, work fields, and input/output fields). It can even
examine lines of code.
If you develop applications in an ILE environment, this will be
doubly effective for you, since the system also identifies all
cross-references between procedures.
Also, if you have implemented DB2/UDB standards and/or you develop
in SQL, there are also cross-references between stored fields,
fields, triggers and procedures.
ARCAD’s unique capability comes from providing multi-platform cross-references.
The tool can trace all the inter-relationships between AS/400 components
(program or file) and other open-system components (Windows, UNIX
or LINUX).
Access Interface
ARCAD solutions let you manipulate this environment through
three different interfaces:
- A 5250 interface, which is useful for people who still develop
in this environment
- A Client Rich interface. This is a graphic
PC-based environment, run through the ARCAD-Observer suite.
- As
direct plug-ins for the WDSC, Eclipse and RAD (Rational Application
Developer)development environments.
Naturally, the interfaces are printable. They can also be exported
as .csv format files.
What’s more, their use of the ARCAD ‘list’ format helps
you identify automation possibilities of all kinds. For example,
if you want to define an automation process to save all files
as updates in a batch process, you can write a macro-command.
In just a few lines, you can search the Repository for the needed information.
Data Refreshing
There are two possible scenarios, depending on whether you have
the ARCAD-Skipper suite.
If you don’t have ARCAD-Skipper, you will need to insert a periodic
procedure into your scheduler. Data is refreshed depending on the processing
timeframe you define.
If you use the ARCAD-Skipper suite, these update procedures are
defined as standard for transfers to production, and can be established
periodically on multiple development environments. Using parallel
storage of all this information, you can dynamically vary your repository’s
view. You can consult both the application as it is in production, or as
it appears in development.
How Does It Work?
ARCAD recovers all the cross-references that are provided standard in the
OS/400. These are enriched by source code analyses, when available. For
multi-platform cross-references, ARCAD uses code-parsing mechanisms. You
are no longer a prisoner of the technology you use; links can be recovered
whether you use Java, VB, .net, C, C++, or other programs.
What Makes the ARCAD Approach Unique
Drawing on the richness of this centralized information repository,
we developed our system of automatic version integrity controls.
Batches of modifications can be given a technical examination before they
are ever transferred to test. This is done so that many more errors that
won’t
be copied.
Even in a multi-platform configuration, you can maintain the same
level of control. The system guarantees seamless synchronization
of developments.
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