Have you ever wondered how program changes will impact your application or your job schedule? Are you involved in maintaining your batch environment? Does your job schedule documentation need an overhaul? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, perhaps it’s time for you to take a look at ABSTRACT, Help/Systems’ programming and analysis tool set for the System i.

What is ABSTRACT?
ABSTRACT is a tool set that allows you to build a “where-used” database that tracks object relationships and other valuable information regarding files, fields, and how they are updated. If you write “home-grown” applications or are responsible for maintaining other people’s code, you can use ABSTRACT to create the documentation you need to manage your environment as efficiently as possible.

Once you have installed ABSTRACT on the System i, select an interface to use. You can install the iSeries Navigator plug-in, the WDSc plug-in, or work directly from a 5250 command line. Next, select the library (or libraries) you want to load into the ABSTRACT cross-reference repository. Once this information is loaded, you can view where-used and used-by relationships.

The object reference options give you a top-down view of your application. The where-used options display your fields or objects from a bottom-up perspective. The LOADXREF command captures information about your application’s programs, files, and other types of objects, such as menus, SEQUEL views, queries, or job schedule entries.

Simplify your development tasks
Once you build your cross-reference, you can use this information to pinpoint how critical changes will affect your application, determine where changes need to be made, automatically re-create all objects affected by physical file record layout changes, or generate a graphical flowchart for documentation purposes.

ABSTRACT also simplifies file analysis. ABSTRACT provides information about your database, display and printer files (including external and internal file layouts), and database and member definitions. ABSTRACT can create exception reports to pinpoint potential problems with your applications or ABSTRACT cross-reference data. You can search source and message files using the Find String option.

Interface with Robot/SCHEDULE
You can load your Robot/SCHEDULE batch environment into your cross-reference repository. Use the command LOADJOBSCD to load your Robot/SCHEDULE jobs from ROBOTLIB into ABSTRACT.

When your batch environment is loaded, you can work with objects referenced by your jobs. For each scheduled job, all programs and commands that are executed within the job are listed. In addition to the programs and commands, other object types, such as job descriptions, job queues, output queues, user profiles and message queues can be listed. If you need to change any of these types of objects, you can list which job(s) would be affected easily.

If you are using the iSeries Navigator or WDSc interface, you can create a flowchart (using ABSTRACT’s built-in flowcharting tool or Microsoft Visio) of objects used by a job or the program cross-reference data. Select the object, job, program, or file to chart and right-click to generate a flowchart.

Another option when working with an object such as a job description or job queue, is to display “where-used” information. This option is available in the traditional 5250 interface, the iSeries Navigator interface, and the WDSc interface.

Finally, if you prefer the WDSc interface, you will see the same information, plus you can review a source flowchart that will show you a visual representation of your program.

In summary
Whether your main responsibility is your job schedule or maintaining a complex application, take advantage of the power of ABSTRACT. Start using the cross-reference repository, file analysis, where-used, and flowcharting options to understand data relationships more fully and to work more efficiently in your environment.

Contributed by Jill Martin, Technical Services Manager