EZ Source provides comprehensive support for IDMS-based applications, in order to improve their support and maintainability so maximising their flexibility and business value.
EZ Legacy is a CA technology partner providing solutions to increase the business value of mainframe applications deployed using either/both CA Endevor and CA IDMS environments. Designed as a 'plug-in' to both environments, EZ Source is rapidly deployed and facilitates immediate improvements in development and support activities by automating all aspects of application analysis.
EZ Source is an Application-oriented Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) that automates Application understanding, analysis and technical documentation for use in all Application Management activities. Synchronising with your source configuration management system, it contains a full inventory of your Application components and their details. By visualising the internal Application structure, dependencies and relationships, EZ Source is an indispensable tool for support activities as well as a precursor to undertaking enhancements and modifications. It is designed for use by all technical staff as well as having management components for transparency into Application metrics. |
| Overview |
IDMS supports major customer Applications and is a core component in many business critical systems. In addition to these Applications being functionally rich and designed for high performance, they have often matured over time into complex environments.
EZ Source provides a platform to automate the analysis and documentation in order to enhance the ability of technical teams to support, extend and optimise these Applications. EZ Source provides appropriate functionality for all users involved in Application Management, integrated by a common repository that contains information on all elements with their parameters and relationships. Automated mapping of all IDMS record and sets usage within Applications boosts the effectiveness of impact analysis processes and changes driven from IDMS. Full IDMS support is included for Cobol, ADS/Online and PL/1 programs. |
| Benefits |
Fast to deploy and use, EZ Source provides proven business benefits faced with the real world challenges of maintaining their existing IDMS Application portfolio.
Some of the key benefits are:
- A reduction of overall delivery costs of between 10 - 18%
- Improved Application quality and performance
- Improved Application longevity, flexibility and business value
- Expert level Application knowledge throughout the team
- Improved Management understanding
- Improved planning and predictability
- Improved ability to integrate IDMS Applications with external environments
- Extremely rapid implementation and time to value. |
| EZ Legacy Edge |
By supporting the different programming languages involved in IDMS-based Applications, only EZ Source provides the detailed understanding needed for development activities. Its ability to meet the challenges of any different users in multiple scenarios satisfies both the demands of technical staff and management.
When performed manually, industry figures conservatively estimate that analysis consumes 30% of all Application Management resources and even then is often incomplete and inaccurate because of the lack of supporting technology. EZ Source's ability to fully automate the different aspects of analysis allows technical teams to improve both performance and quality, based on an accurate and comprehensive understanding of all Application components. In turn, IT Management can then base decision making and planning on a quantitative understanding. |
| EZ Source: Underpinning Enterprise Application Management |
EZ Source fully automates IDMS-based Application analysis, documentation and measurement, helping organisations with the real world problem of managing their existing Application portfolio.
EZ Source correlates the relationships between the different Application components and automates the production of technical documentation. It operates across multiple languages and environments, including ADS/O, Cobol, PL/1 and others producing consistent understanding and measurement. Through its ability to parse different Application components (for example, source code, OS scripts, record and set definitions, screen maps, transactions, messaging system data, Application server data, etc) and then visualise the internal Application structure and dependencies, users can select their starting point and navigate across or drill down as required, in order to precisely determine the scope and level of analysis. This Applications CMDB functionality is complemented by a rich choice of visualisation and reporting options so users can precisely define the scope and depth.
Many different options are provided to visualise the analysis according to requirements and results. For example, a particular analysis may reveal complex interdependencies with different types of components, so EZ Source has user definable dependency levels, filtering and different visualisation layouts in order to achieve optimum understanding. In all stages in the analysis, EZ Source synchronises with the source code so developers can understand exactly how functions are performed. |
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| Analysis showing high level cross Application components |
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| "Where used" visualisation |
In addition to this internal program analysis, EZ Source also includes database and interface components so that the relationships can be understood from the most relevant perspective. If conducted manually, it is difficult to identify even straightforward questions such as "where is this record or set used?" or "which IDMS components are accessed by this ADS/O program?" EZ Source provides complete results in seconds.
An additional option is a comprehensive reporting portal used to measure different aspects of the Application. EZ Reports includes both industry standard metrics (e.g.McCabe, Halstead, Function Point) and user-definable parameters. Invaluable for Management and Architecture requirements, it allows quality and code standards to be institutionalized into the development and review process. In addition, it also gives developers valuable insights by documenting aspects such as "where used" and "dead code" occurrences. |
| All of this functionality provides a one-stop shop for understanding and analysis of your Applications. An additional module - EZ Source Enterprise Server - also goes one step further (for mainframe environments) by adding information on the Infrastructure and how the Application performs in production, including such information as identifying transactions, code or control language that have not been used for a period of time. This is invaluable in extending our Application CMDB information to the logical and physical environment, including automatically mapping the interdependencies for optimisation based on actual usage and improved support. |
| EZ Source integration |
Many organisations will have existing infrastructure that is complementary to the EZ Source analysis capabilities. The product therefore provides a wide range of integration options so that EZ Source can be loaded, or provide data to be both current in its analysis and add value to other products.
Some examples are:
- Source Configuration Management Systems - automatically loading and propagating changes when they occur from platforms such as Endevor, Librarian, Changeman and Panvalet
- Planning - export of Application metrics to Excel for work planning and estimation
- EZ Source API - exporting data from the EZ Source repository to other systems such as CA CMDB |
