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Observer

 

Application Mining

At a Glance

The Observer suite contributes application intelligence for maintaining and transferring knowledge of existing systems. Whether the context is application maintenance or modernization, the basic needs are the same: to find information within complex application architectures and have ready access to technical documentation that is guaranteed to be relevant and up to date.

Business Issue

Software development teams spend at least 50% of their time trying to understand an application before modifying it. The solution to this business problem is application mining software that focuses on productivity in IBM i application maintenance.

Application mining is to the IT professional what data mining is to the business manager. Observer is the only product in the IBM i field to summarize application architecture and rules with a set of graphical tools. This enables developers to sift through a vast quantity of diverse information and understand an application in seconds prior to making changes.

The Solution

The Observer suite gives you full control over the technical knowledge of existing applications. Observer is a powerful navigator for your information system, plus a means of automating documentation production. With Observer, new staff members are productive more rapidly, the lifetime of your applications is extended, and legal obligations are fulfilled. In the case of third-party application management, Observer brings real transparency to workload estimates - and for the customer, a guaranteed technical grasp over his applications.

Technical Architecture

Observer relies on a native IBM i repository to delve into your applications and present information in a graphical format. The audit and loading phases are run on the IBM i. Once you have completed this step, the repository can be accessed from a PC. The solution uses internal middleware to access the data on the IBM i, which optimizes the data transfer between the IBM i and the PC.

On the client side,  Observer supports Windows NT, Windows 2000, and XP. On the server side,  Observer runs on IBM i.

Prerequisites

OS/400 V5R1 and higher. Native or graphical interface on PC (Windows 2000, XP - Connection via TCP/IP).

Strengths

• Single tool to manage knowledge of your entire information system,
• Powerful graphical interface for easy navigation,
• Standard export format for wide and rapid distribution,
• Resolves documentation issues.

Gains

• Technical mastery of an application prior to decision making,
• Continuity of the information system,
• Significant reduction in the ramp-up time for new staff,
• Automated impact analysis and workload estimates,
• Easier identification of bugs,
• Easier interface development,
• Easier migration to new technology.