RE: UML Modeling Tool

From: Jon Paris

>> While X-Analysis is a pretty cool tool, it really isn't much more than
a
Probe/Abstract or Hawkeye (albeit it with some cool features). Where-used
is a way different animal than logic analysis.

Have you actually looked at the tool recently Joe? If so I think you
maybe need to revisit it.

Looked at as in used, or as in reviewed their website documentation? I went
through the demos, and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

The stuff they've shown me takes it way beyond the
stuff that Hawkeye and the others do. They were also very active in the
Y2K arena and probably would have selected as the "IBM brand" if they
had been a bit more interested.

If you say so. I doubt they had anywhere near the functionality we had,
though. I'm REAL good at code manipulation <grin>.

Admittedly the basic X-Analysis package doesn't go light years beyond the
others - but data flow (which in itself is more than "where used" as you
know) has been part of the tool for over 10 years.

Actually, I sort of disagree with you here. If you're talking about the
parameter pass-through stuff, it's exactly what I consider "where used".
Basically, a field gets a type attribute assigned to it when another field
is put into it. Attributes are passed through MOVEs and through parameter
passing. Conflicts are flagged. Not very difficult stuff. Smart programs
handle data structures; REALLY smart programs look for based fields.

They've come a long way
from there but it is via optional components. I haven't had a chance to
work through a full project myself, but a couple of my customers have
begun using it extensively and are very impressed. One of them
previously used Hawkeye, but it couldn't do what they needed.

Well, I'm not comparing Databorough to Hawkeye, or to anything else for that
matter. I'm just saying that it's a huge conceptual leap from data flow
analysis to business rule extraction, and that I'm reasonably sure that you
won't be able to programmatically extract all the business rules from, say,
a typical BPCS program.

Joe