| Overview |
In order to maximise the business value, most large SAP implementations contain custom extensions, often significant in size and their business impact. Whilst the core SAP modules are supported and enhanced by SAP, these customisations need to be implemented, maintained and managed in a controlled way to ensure timely support and risk management.. EZ Source provides a platform to automate the analysis and documentation of these extensions and to support the technical teams in performing their different tasks, such as error correction, enhancement or upgrade planning.
Key to its success is the ability of EZ Source to provide appropriate functionality for all users in Application Management, integrated using a common repository that contains information on each elements and their parameters and relationships. This allows precise, user-driven navigation according to the task in hand. Support is included for components such as ABAP, Netweaver and RFC/XI. |
| Benefits |
Fast to deploy and use, EZ Source provides a single, comprehensive source of information for full Application understanding to all team members.
Some of the key benefits are:
- A reduction of overall delivery costs of between 10 - 18%
- Improved Application quality and performance
- Streamlined support procedures
- Expert level Application knowledge throughout the team
- Improved Management understanding
- Improved planning and predictability
- Automated upgrade and version planning
- Improved end-user support levels
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. As a result, IT Management can then improve decision making and planning by having quantitative metrics that are based on a common understanding across different environments and teams. |
| The EZ Legacy edge |
| By supporting ABAP at a compiler level, only EZ Source provides the detailed understanding needed for development activities. Its ability to meet the challenges of many different users in multiple scenarios is facilitated by rapid implementation and ease of use to satisfy both the demands of technical staff and management alike. |
| EZ Source: Underpinning Enterprise Application Management |
EZ Source fully automates SAP Application analysis, documentation and measurement, helping organisations with the real world problems faced by the technical team in managing and enhancing the code. Developers can be productive in a matter of days as opposed to many months when acquiring Application knowledge manually.
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 ABAP and Netweaver, to produce consistent understanding and measurement. Through its ability to retrieve the different Application components and then visualise the internal Application structure and dependencies, users can select their starting point and navigate across or drill down as required. This Application 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 visualisation layouts in order to achieve optimum understanding. At all stages in the analysis, EZ Source synchronises with the source code so developers can understand exactly how functions are implemented. |
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| Analysis showing high level cross Application components |
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| "Where used" visualisation |
In addition to this internal analysis, EZ Source also includes database and interface components so that the relationships can be understood from the most relevant perspective. Conducted manually, it is difficult to identify even straightforward questions such as "which components use this table?", or "what are the differences between these two versions?" EZ Source provides comprehensive 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 (eg McCabe, Halstead) and user definable parameters. Invaluable for Management and Architecture requirements, it allows quality and code standards to be institutionalised 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. |
| 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 as appropriate the tool can be loaded, or provide data to be both current in its analysis and add value to other products. Some examples are:
- SAP Bridge - synchronise the EZ Source analysis and the SAP GUI Application within Eclipse
- 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 Enterprise CMDB's |
EZ Source provides comprehensive coverage for SAP Applications, in order to improve their support and maintainability whilst maximising their flexibility and business value. In many implementations, the core SAP modules have been complemented by additional customised functionality and these areas increase significantly the Application Management workload - for these extensions and modifications EZ Source significantly improves their management and maintenance.
EZ Source is an Applications CMDB that automates Application understanding, analysis and technical documentation for use in all Application Management activities. Synchronising with your SAP Repository, it contains a full inventory of your Application components and their parameters. 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 upgrades, enhancements and modifications. It is designed for use by all technical staff as well as having management components for transparency into Application metrics. |
