NGSET : Application Knowledge Recovery

Application Knowledge Recovery

NGSET services enable enterprises to recover application knowledge embedded in their source code. This is achieved through NGSET´s automatic code analysis and interpretation technology. Furthermore, using NGSET tools, application experts are able to complement recovered knowledge.

Application Knowledge Recovery services are offered through the following set of offerings:

Inventory and Quality Analysis
Logical Data Dictionary construction
Impact Analysis
Contextual Analysis

Inventory and Quality Analysis

Deliverables

When analyzing an application system, NGSET provides 2 types of reports in various format (text, spreadsheet, html):

Quantitative data reports: Number of components, files, tables, lines of code, maps, etc. List of missing components, missing parents, etc.

Quality reports: More than 50 quality criteria are evaluated and aggregated into major software quality domains such as: Reliability, Maintainability, Portability… NGSET may also implement additional quality criteria to meet customer needs for quality control and enforcement.

Benefits

Through Inventory and Quality Analysis, customers have available on hand a factual evaluation of their application system. These numbers, available at system level as well as at component level, are a prerequisite for:

Elaborating a quality improvement strategy, and defining the required activities

Assessing the compliance to quality standards

Managing contractual relationship when software maintenance is outsourced

Delivery Mode

It mainly consists for NGSET in implementing and operating a batch production line which automatically analyses source code, and produces reports.

This automated processing capability enables NGSET to process reports for several millions of lines of code within a few days.

Logical Data Dictionary Construction

Deliverables

NGSET builds a file containing all variables corresponding to given logical data types within an application system.

Examples of logical data types:
"contract number ", "amount","quantity","rate","identification number ", etc. These logical data types may have subtypes such as amount with 7 digits, with 9 digits, etc.

Benefits

Customers have an exhaustive inventory of all variables belonging to a given logical data type. This inventory makes maintenance much easier and effective.

The file produced by NGSET is used in the Impact Analysis offering described hereunder. It is also used by the automatic redocumentation SIR software which enables users to search components using a given data type.

Delivery Mode

Using customer rules and naming conventions, NGSET automatically detects all variables belonging to a given logical data type. This is achieved through Data Flow propagation analysis. When ambiguities are detected, NGSET has a tool which assists users in determining and validating the exact logical data type.

Note: Similarly, NGSET has built a tool available for Function Dictionary construction. This allows associating instructions within an application to one or more logical functions, and to visualize all relationships between instructions, functions, and variables.

Detailed Impact Analysis

Deliverables

NGSET builds and publishes 3 types of reports:

A report for each program and copybook component identifying all occurences of a given logical data type. Warning messages are also inserted in sources whenever NGSET detects an abnormal usage: operations involving non-compatible data types, loss of precision in calculation, or context specific rules defined by the customer.

A summary report is produced for each application set. It displays every line of code subject to a warning, along with the preceding and following lines of code.

Statistical reports are produced at application level, and for each component, giving the number of variables involved in the impact analysis, the number of warning messages, etc.

Benefits

Customers receive an exhaustive inventory of all occurences, within the source code, of variables having a given logical data type. This inventory is valuable, if not mandatory, for all mass maintenance operations such as changing the size or format of a variable (Euro migration, contract id number expansion, phone number expansion, data conversion, etc.). All lines of code potentially subject to changes or to errors are identified. It also helps assessing the volume and the effort for implementing the changes.

Impact Analysis is a prerequisite for all mass transformations involving data.

Delivery Mode

The Impact Analysis is achieved in 2 steps: Logical Data Dictionary construction, followed by an automated production of Impact Analysis reports.

Contextual Analysis

Contextual Analysis is a NGSET service helping software engineers to maintain COBOL programs. For each variable within a program it indicates in which condition this variable is manipulated.

Deliverables

NGSET provides a knowledge base along with a software tool enabling customers to visualize, for a given program, the logical context in which variables are manipulated.

Benefits

This offering is especially suited for programs which are difficult to understand either because of their large size, or because of their complex logic.

Using NGSET´s software tool, Software engineers navigate through the application control flow. They are able to select an instruction manipulating a variable, to navigate upwards through all logical paths leading to this instruction. Conversely, downwards navigation is also possible to visualize all instructions and variables impacted through Data Flow or Control Flow.

Delivery Mode

In a first stage, NGSET builds the knowledge base associated to the programs provided by the customer. In a second stage, NGSET delivers this knowledge base at the customer premises, accompanied by the software tool allowing to exploit this knowledge base.