Helping you document, analyse & understand your IBM i (AS400 & iSeries) code & applications

X-Analysis View

Automatically generate interactive graphical documentation, charts & graphs of your IBM i applications

Move RPG and Cobol projects forward quicker: get more time to do more development. Delivering exceptional ROI, X-Analysis View (formerly Fresche View), powered by X-Analysis Advisor is a powerful tool that enables you to get in-depth understanding your IBM i (AS400) applications so you can move development projects forward faster and onboard new developers more quickly.

X-Analysis View automatically generates interactive graphical documentation, charts and graphs.

What X-Analysis View can help you to achieve

• Make code changes with confidence: Achieve better development, faster testing and greatly reduced risk through a deep understanding of the impact across all your IBM i (AS400, iSeries, System i) applications, including any downstream consequences of the code changes you want to make.
• Move projects forward quicker: Estimate IT project resource requirements more accurately. X-Analysis View highlights cascading effects of change plus where to focus testing efforts by showing the objects impacted by a change.
• Get new developers up to speed faster: New developers can understand RPG and COBOL applications faster so they can contribute quicker and work autonomously. Developers can quickly explore and navigate applications graphically at a high level with the ability to drill up or down.

IBM i (AS400, iSeries, System i) applications are often large and complex, so when you are making changes to your applications, just how confident are you that nothing will go wrong with the code changes you make?

And, if you have new developers starting in your organisation, just how long does it take for them to get up to speed so you are comfortable with them making code or database changes?

X-Analysis View is a new way to get in-depth understanding your IBM i applications so you can move development projects forward faster and onboard new developers more quickly. With X-Analysis View your developers get a complete 360-degree view of your IBM i environment with automated, graphical documentation and impact analysis. As a result, your developers can spend less time maintaining your existing applications and more time actually developing.

X-Analysis View is fully integrated with RDi and helps you and your developers to fully understand your application code, data models and the possible impact of any changes to your system before any development work is done. Your developers will have insight into the applications and data which significantly reduces the time and effort required to modify, maintain and test applications on the IBM i.

Key features in X-Analysis View

Powered by X-Analysis Advisor, X-Analysis View provides on-demand IBM i (AS400, iSeries, System i) application documentation in a graphical format. X-Analysis View includes the visual documentation component, the impact analysis component and data model of X-Analysis Advisor and customers can upgrade to the full version of X-Analysis Advisor at anytime, which brings additional features such as code generation and database migration capabilities.

• Interactive graphical documentation: X-Analysis View generates automated graphical documentation and data flow diagrams, which make it easy for developers to visualise IBM i applications. Program control through call stack is shown, RPG is displayed in easy-to-read pseudo code and object use, access, parameters, etc. are provided.
• Drill-downs for discovery: X-Analysis View’s powerful drill-down and drill-up capabilities ensure that developers get precisely the level of detail they need. Detail right down to the source code is provided while variables can be traced through multiple layers. Applications can be browsed from anywhere.
• Where used functions: Powerful impact analysis tracks ‘where used’ information throughout the application and database. X-Analysis View tracks variables through all iterations and associations, while every object affected by a change is highlighted. Document system functionality is included for application auditing and planning.
• Relational data models: Relational data modelling of your IBM i application databases provides a deeper understanding of your business. X-Analysis View automatically extracts from DDS, DB objects and source, which provides a working model to support IT and the wider business. All related database files are also shown.

 

X-Dataset

Test even the largest, most complex IBM i applications. And ensure your sensitive data is protected along the way.

Fresche has established the industry standard for testing IBM i applications with effective automated data and test management tool to help you test undocumented IBM i applications faster. 

X-Dataset includes data subsetting, masking, aging, integrity checking and regression testing. From a main database, X-Dataset creates subsets for testing that maintain complete referential integrity for faster testing speed and accuracy. 

In the majority of IBM i shops, their applications have either been home grown or modified heavily over the years. Although this does represent many years of diligent development, it can lead to significant risk when we consider that testing is key to successful development and implementation.

To ensure coding errors or bugs don’t exist before applications are ‘pushed’ into production it is imperative that you have the right databases to test and those databases are appropriately-sized.

• Protect your data: X-Dataset enables you to fully anonymise your data to assist compliance with regulations such as GDPR, SOX and HIPAA. Data formats such as dates, names, order numbers, address details etc. are maintained by anonymised for complete protection of personal data (supports regulatory principles such as right to be informed / right to access / right to erasure / tight to restrict processing / right to data portability / right to object and profiling)
• Manage your test data: build, refresh and test data automatically whilst running validation for table relationships. You can also archive, purge and subset your data to prepare for testing
• Testing: verify test completeness and identify elements that have not been tested with code coverage reports. You can also analyse before and after reports in regression testing.

If you combine X-Dataset with X-Replay, you can also test screens, data and business logic for complete end-to-end IBM i application testing – whilst ensuring your sensitive data is protected. 

X-A Open

Gain insight into your Java & PHP code running on IBM i

You may already have X-Analysis running across your IBM i analysing and documenting your RPG and CA 2E (Synon) code, but what about the many other languages that can be used across your IBM i?

And, what about the code that’s running on other platforms that just happens to interact with your IBM i applications?

Or even code that doesn’t interact with the IBM i?

X-A Open automatically analyses languages such as Java and PHP to help you understand the code on your IBM i and on other platforms.

Working in a similar way to X-Analysis, X-A Open creates a cross-reference repository for selected coding languages, including Java and PHP.

All you need is access to the sources, regardless of where the applications are deployed.

Documentation is easily exported in Word, Excel or Visio so you can share it easily with others in your business. The graphical interface makes the understanding of complex relationships across applications easy to understand, which ultimately speeds up development time and makes maintenance and support of large, complex applications much easier.

X-DB Modernize

Convert DDS to DDL automatically. Creation of constraints, long field names & views included

There are many reasons for modernising and re-engineering your IBM i databases – and each is well documented: from accessing the very latest IBM database features to making data more accessible; and from helping to access new international markets to benefiting from advanced query reporting.

Part of the X-Analysis Code & Database Modernization modules, X-DB Modernize converts your DDS database, copies production data into your new database and doesn’t require recompiling programs.

Prior to starting the conversion process, X-DB Modernize provides a report highlighting any potential issues in advance, including, but not limited to:

• PF files with non-unique keys
• Files with zero members
• No matching parent keys in derived constraints.

By re-engineering your IBM i databases to DDL, you’re effectively opening up DB2 to your business and helps you start the process of making your data available through modern UIs, mobile devices and the Cloud.

Technically, X-DB Modernize features:

• Contains exported procedures for CRUD records in the table
• Export of DDL from relational data model (including RPG, COBOL or 2E application)
• Generates database RPGSQLLE service programs
• Exports UML Class Diagrams from relational data model
• Creates Hibernate configuration files and JPA package from generated relational model.

X-Modernize

Convert your RPG and CA 2E applications to modern languages automatically

Stable and robust. Those are the very bedrock of IBM i.

You’ve no doubt invested many years in developing and enhancing your RPG and CA 2E based applications to meet your unique business needs.

But if you’re wanting (or under pressure) to modernise your applications so you can take advantage of web and mobile technologies; connect your existing applications with other business systems; or use open source within your applications, then X-Modernize could be the answer as it automatically re-factors and generates a native web application in a modern language such as Java and PHP.

• Modern architecture: generates Java or PHP applications
• Complete conversion to native code: all functionality of your RPG and CA 2E applications are converted, generating code which is easier to maintain. For CA 2E projects, X-Modernize uses the design model to ensure completeness
• Conversion automation speeds up the process – increasing ROI and reducing errors at the same time
• Modern, highly responsive web UI out of the box which takes full advantage of the latest front end technologies
• Combine with other modules in the suite: X-Analysis creates your object repository from sources; X-Modernize converts the code; and X-DB Modernize generates your DDL/SQL/UDB database.