Reverse Engeneering and Process Flows

[cob002]

Hi,
I am looking for tool which allows to evaluate existing Cobol source
code and generate flow charts, program dependencies diagrams, etc.
I've already looked at Cobol Miner (BluePrint) and AnalyzeIT (Intercomp).
Anyone knows any other good tools? Please let me know.

Thanks in advance

 

[Crox]

Hi,

There is a company that analyses if you want just one but also all the sources of your system with not only COBOL but also any other language and also the embedded SQL. It can report all the business rules there are inside the system. You can make queries using SQL on every specific thing in the system. Things like 'what are the rules behind the field there on that screen' and the system will give you the business rules. Flowcharts is the least thing they do.

You can find them at:

http://www.cornerstone.nl

I met them when they did Y2k and EURO analyses and conversions, sometimes even at the same time, so I admire them but they don't have shares for sale. :-(

Regards,

Crox

 

[CliveC]

Revolve by Micro Focus

 

[Guest_imported]

Greetings
The ADPAC corp has a tool which can provide triple what cornerstone can provide. I was at a customer site and completed a benchmark test with 30,000 LOC (COBOL) with both ADPAC and Cornerstone. The ADPAC tool provided reports with 100% accuracy and 3 days ahead of schedule. Keep in mind that Cornerstone is in the Netherlands which is fine if your located in Europe; but if your located in the states the ADPAC headquarters is in San Francisco. The ADPAC tools can do structure charts from COBOL, Assembler, CSP, NOMAD & PL1 source code. The ADPAC tool can draw a chart showing the structure of an entire application and the program associations (relationships). The name of the product is SS21 (SS = Structure Systems) it is a mainframe product. If you look at the cornerstone product (XRAY analysor) it is GUI based, and more than likely process through cached data (lets not kid ourselves about Getting a GUI based tool to process on an IRON). SS21 works in real time. It is 3270 based and Inventories all business rules via JCL. If your interested send and email and I can provide you with sample legacy reports and models that the SS21 can produce.

One closing note. Yes this may seem sales'y but I'm not a sales guy I'm a consultant who utilizes the SS21 in production.

** We also resell Micro Focus tools and find the SS21 more productive and easier to use.


ttuomey@intertecamerica.com

 

[nair74]

Hi ,

There is Micro focus tool called MF revolve. Its a very good one. U get all the flow of the application and also you can write ur own scripts to get reports in the format that u want. U need to create the DB of all the cobol programs.

regards
sukesh

 

[StephenJSpiro]

Revolve is a nice product. It will do your JCL, too.

 

[Guest_imported]

With ADPAC's SS/21 no need to write scripts for resports. SS/21 is a reporting tool with 100's of differnt report formats. Also, no need to create a DB for the target cobol programs. The reports showing the "physical" structure of complete application can be automatically prepared. By physical structure is how the tool can link the programs together: i.e., which JOBs, PROCEDUREs, or PROGRAMs invoke (CALL) which other procedures, or programs, etc. Some of our applications were so poorly written without the SS/21 we would've never be able to locate all of the subroutines (proceedures)and how they are interrelated.

Good luck

 

[Crox]

I am often wondering why the COBOL-forum world never develops some tools themselves like changing the source into some html format with zoom-possibilities. Some GNU of Linux like groups. I would like a good forum for that where people also upload their sources.

Regards,

Crox

 

[k5tm]

Crox,

That in fact might be a worthy and different effort for the open source COBOL folks to pursue. I haven't looked at the project, but I would presume that somewhere during the compile there is a source tree available. That is probably the common element in most reverse engineering tools. Once you have a source tree, lots of interesting information can be derived.
Tom Morrison