Business Rule Extraction from COBOL applications

Enterprise Applications typically contain substantial amount of Business Knowledge which have been constructed, enhanced and tuned over many years. Typically such Legacy Enterprise Applications do not have up-to-date documentation, and original authors and designers are no longer be able or available to re-document the system.

Manual re-documentation of such code often is a lengthy, hugely expensive and error prone process.

SoftwareMining's BRE Toolkit uses sophisticated search algorithms to sieve through huge amount of code and isolate the business related code. The system allows assignment of descriptions in natural language to the set of variables referenced within the identified rule. This feature can be used to reproduce business rules in a Natural Language form (ie English).

One of the main features of the tools is the ability to apply SoftwareMining's language translation technology to the extracted business rules. The Rules can thus be export as Java, C# or COBOL code snippets ready for incorporation onto a newly built applications.

Benefits

• Ease Application Maintenance

• Substantial gains in Speed and Accuracy for Business Rule Extraction processes

• Opening the system to Business-Analyst: GAP Analysis

• Business rules exported as HTML - and readily accessible to team members

• Application Flowcharting exported as SVG/HTML

• Re-architecture: Multi language & SOA

• Multi-User facility

An Example

Most COBOL programs perform a variety of tasks. For example, a Order-Processing program may calculate invoice, update inventory records, have data-entry screens etc. SoftwareMining's Business Rule Extraction Strategy works by providing Data and Statement-Category filters, and advanced search algorithms to extract the relevant information from the programs.

All the Business Analyst / developers have to do to start the business rule extraction process is to define:

• Specify a filter on ORDER-VALUE Variable; telling the system to find Object References to ORDER-VALUE through the COBOLs Hierarchical structures and REDEFINITIONs

• Select Statement filters; screen-handling, database handling and transaction handling, exception handling statements should be ignored as a part of this business rule.

The application of the above filters leads to identification of code responsible for calculating the Value of Orders.

The following code snippet is produced as a result of BRE of a large COBOL program

   
            IF ORD-VAL IS GREATER THAN DIS-THRSHLD
              OR CLNT-IS-NEW
            THEN
             COMPUTE ORD-VAL = ORD-VAL * WS-DISCT-PRCNT
            END-IF.
      
            IF CLNT-IS-LOCAL
            THEN
               IF NXT-DAY-DLVRY
                 COMPUTE ORD-VAL = ORD-VAL + STD-LCL-DELV-CHRG
               ELSE
                 COMPUTE ORD-VAL = ORD-VAL + NXT-DAY-LCL-DELV-CHRG
               END-IF
            ELSE
               COMPUTE ORD-VAL = ORD-VAL + OVRSEA-DELV-CHRG
            END-IF.
      

Translation of COBOL Rules to Natural Language

SoftwareMining's Business Rule Extraction Toolkit also facilitates the association of Natual Language Description with variables names. The descriptions are used together in-built heuristic based Natural Language substitution algorithms to generate specifications in Psuedo-English from the extracted business rule. For example:

       
      IF Order Value IS GREATER THAN lower discount limit
        OR This is a new Client
      THEN
        Order Value = Order Value * discount percentage
      END-IF.
      
      IF client has local geographical location
      THEN
         IF Requires Next Day Delivery
            Order Value = Order Value + Local Delivery Charge
         ELSE
            Order Value = Order Value + next day delivery charge
         END-IF
      ELSE
          Order Value = Order Value + Overseas Delivery Charge
      END-IF.
       

Translation of COBOL Rules to Java Rules

Often the aim of Business Rule Extraction is produce specification for rewrite of application in Java or C#. SoftwareMining's COBOL to Java Translation system is an integrated part of the Business-Rule-Extraction Toolset. The translation module can be used to produce the business rules in Maintainable and Legible Java or C# code, together with all XML definitions for data-beans, Object-Relational Persistence Beans, and the underlying framework.

/**
 * calcDiscount
 */

protected void calcDiscount (){
  if (orderMaster.getOrdVal() > iData.getDisThrshld() || 
      orderMaster.getFirstTimeClient()
		  .equals(orderMaster.firstTimeClientClntIsNew)) 
  {
    orderMaster.setOrdVal(orderMaster.getOrdVal() 
		                  * iData.getWsDisctPrcnt());
  }
		  
  if (clientInfo.getLocalClnt()
          .equals(clientInfo.localClntClntIsLocal)) 
  {
    if (orderMaster.getDeliveryOption()
          .equals(orderMaster.deliveryOptionNxtDayDlvry)) 
    {
      orderMaster.setOrdVal(orderMaster.getOrdVal() 
		                   + iData.getStdLclDelvChrg());
    } else 
	{
      orderMaster.setOrdVal(orderMaster.getOrdVal() 
		                   + iData.getNxtDayLclDelvChrg());
    }
  } else {
    orderMaster.setOrdVal(orderMaster.getOrdVal() 
		                   + iData.getOvrseaDelvChrg());
  }
}