The automated IT software inventory solution

Understanding legacy systems

The Legacy Directory - Enterprise Automated Software Inventory

There are some universal truths in computing:

The simpler the change the more likely it is to bite you when and where you do not expect.
There will always be more work required than your team can humanly do.
Management will always ask you to save money.

The software development and management process becomes ever more complicated as time goes on. New technologies compete with existing systems creating a complex, multi-layered environment that keeps getting more costly to maintain.

Automated inventory analysis can help to make software management easier, cheaper and less expensive.

The Legacy Directory completely automates the production of a software inventory and quickly provides detailed analysis of the impact of change in an easy to use and familiar environment. With minimal input from technical specialists, it allows you to quickly identify areas where cost savings can be realised.

Making it easier to keep track of your software

Provides an accurate software inventory
Understanding multiple software languages, environments and platforms is the key to collecting all application information and inter-dependencies together in one place. The Legacy Directory is a simple, cost effective solution.
The Legacy Directory processes the broadest range of programming languages, databases and control information, and is flexible enough to support obscure programming languages.
The Legacy Directory automates the entire inventory gathering process. With The Legacy Directory you can identify redundant source code quickly and easily. Automatic orphan processing identifies where source code has been lost.
Instantly available impact analysis
The Legacy Directory not only provides all the information necessary to generate an accurate software inventory, it also gives the user the ability to instantly assess the impact of change on existing systems.
The language used is irrelevant, the coding standards unimportant.
The Legacy Directory synthesises all the information about your applications portfolio into a common format. Even if you have site-specific language pre-processors, or use obscure languages, The Legacy Directory can support them
The performance product
The Legacy Directory can completely automate the manual processes that have tended to slow down software maintenance or have required system experts to be always on hand.
- Automated and flexible rules based code scanning is achieved using a product kernel and rules tables for each language. The benefits of this approach are the low levels of system resources needed to run The Legacy Directory, and the speed in which “in house” anomalies can be extracted. Out of the box, The Legacy Directory supports over 60 languages, database definitions, TP Monitors and Job Control information. Older languages as diverse as Assembler, Mantis, and CA/Ideal are handled in exactly the same way producing consistent and useful output.
- Asynchronous Object Matching is the key to the speed of The Legacy Directory. By only extracting information from code in a downwards direction (i.e. the child relationships from an object) the matching of application objects is undertaken only at the point that the application information is loaded to the Directory's database. By not attempting to resolve all relationship issues at the time of the code scan, The Legacy Directory saves time, effort and resources, and still produces an accurate metadata model of your entire software stack that is easy to understand.
- Optimised Database Structures are vital when the time taken to access information is critical. The Legacy Directory delivers answers in a fraction of the time of other code scanning techniques such as "ISPF 3.14" and proprietary code scanners used by configuration and library management products. Instant access to data enables development and maintenance staff to be more efficient. More importantly, The Directory reduces the use of CPU and I/O intensive products, providing savings in expensive computer resources.
- Scripting facilities are provided to pinpoint areas of interest. The Legacy Directory delivers answers at the depth and quality required in a standard and consistent manner. Using standardised techniques, the scripting facility uses very little systems resources and delivers an integrated picture of required information.

In summary: The Legacy Directory provides robust, enterprise wide information on your application systems:

Generates an accurate applications inventory. By using The Legacy Directory's rules based parsing technology, your applications are synthesised into a common format that provides the appropriate level of information suitable for your requirements.
Instant, believable Impact Analysis. Using a common and familiar interface in ISPF, an assessment of the impact of a change to an application component can be made quickly and easily without waiting for a long running code scanning operation to be queued and completed. The use of the advanced scripting facility can be used both in batch and online, delivering sensible and structured information tailored exactly to the needs of the language parsers available to users today.
Delivers quality Systems and Applications Metadata. Through its broad parsing capabilities, The Legacy Directory synthesises information into a common format providing consistent metadata information across an organisation's portfolio, applications, programs and widely differing computing environments.
Identifies redundant code. Code that is no longer used is easily identified and archived thanks to The Legacy Directory's sophisticated object managing functionality. One customer stated that 50% of their production source was redundant; they just didn’t know which 50%! Using The Legacy Directory, their real production source was quickly identified.
The Redundancy Identification function is used to identify unused software leading to immediate cost savings.
Indicates where code has been lost. As part of the loading process, The Legacy Directory attempts to match up code scanned with references to that code in other application objects. For example, JCL will contain references to load modules. If the load module is not in any library it is an indication both that the code is potentially missing and that the job contains the reference will fail or is no longer run. The Legacy Directory's "missing members" feature quickly generates a list of lost code for further analysis.
Provides a simple and focused inquiry engine. The quikVU feature of The Legacy Directory allows the user to ask specific questions without the need to “dig down” through multiple layers of information. quikVU is designed for people in a hurry who know exactly what information is required. It is designed to compliment the more detailed information retrieval functions of The Legacy Directory.

For more information on The Legacy Directory contact us today