How it works...

To get started, you use ARCAD core to build a complete central repository for your applications. This product analyzes your libraries and uses your source code to develop a database that contains all the inter-relationships between components. Transformer will use this base to analyze all the information paths or links through your processes.

 ARCAD-Transformer then automates the following steps:

Auditing impacted fields (see the related page for audit and restructuring)

This job uses the extraction requests built from the list of all the fields in the database. These requests can be linked together in sequence using ARCAD technology.

Running the propagation engines

ARCAD-Transformer has three "engines" that must be run successively in batch mode. The entry point for these engines is the list of fields in the database that we have selected. The first engine is the most simple and handles the modifications in the sources of physical files (i.e., field additions, changes in size). The second engine is the most important. It looks for the fields in your programs.

It has three phases:

• Phase 1 determines the list of affected programs. It builds a list of all the programs impacted by modification of the selected fields.
• Phase 2 searches for the connection between the initial database fields and the different work fields in a step-by-step manner. This phase is run several times in order to obtain the desired result.
• Phase 3 to generate modification suggestions. The third phase uses an engine to modify the DDS of screen and print files.

Applying modifications to source

Before applying modifications to the source, the system performs an automatic "check-out" of the impacted components. The source lines are then flagged. The only work left to do afterwards is to check the flagging. The components are now under change control.

Recompiling components

The final phase is the recompilation phase. Here we have the perfect example of the simultaneous use of the arcad technology. Recovery of dependencies is based on repository data, and the ARCAD compilation command is applied to the general component list built from that data.

Generating data recovery programs

ARCAD-Transformer is also able to generate data recovery programs. After having specified the recovery rule(s), it will generate one program per impacted file.