QuiChE An Introduction R.O.I. Syngineering is pleased to introduce you to QuiChE, our automated system documentation tool for the MultiValue Database community, including Pick(R), uniVerse(R), Unidata(R) and others. QuiChE is a mnemonic which stands for "Quick Chart Everything". It creates reports and charts which show the inter-relationships between the components of your application system. Why are you looking at this brochureware? Follow this link to Start the demonstration! QuiChE provides the following information: For each file on your system: What is the name of every program, procedure and subroutine that touches it? (opens it, reads from it, updates it or "all of the above") For every subroutine and INCLUDE item: What and where are all the programs that call it or include it? For every program: The opposite view, in other words, which files does it use and which subroutines does it call? For every PROC or Paragraph: what files are used? Now you can quickly and easily determine where files are used and updated, where subroutines are called, and where INCLUDES/INSERTS are used, all without examining a single program!! This is extremely helpful in new program development, where the new programs must be carefully integrated with the existing system. Having such information readily available is also very useful in on-going software maintenance, where the impact of proposed changes and enhancements must be analyzed. Yet another valuable use of the information supplied by QuiChE is to help new programmers come up to speed on your environment as quickly as possible. The operation of QuiChE is very straightforward. Any program written in the versions of Basic supplied with the various MultiValue Compliant systems (Pick(R), uniVerse(R), Unidata(R), etc.) can be analyzed by QuiChE. PROC's can also be analyzed. And QuiChE is extensible! If you have a standard File Open or Read function, for example, it can be added to QuiChE so that it is recognized and appears on the reports. QuiChE is installed as a menu. Menu options are provided to: Analyze Basic code Analyze PROC's Create the program/file matrix report (an example of which is included in this document Create the various analysis reports, each of which represents one 'view' of your system. A 'view' in this context refers to the orientation of the report. Following is a brief description of the views offered in the standard release of QuiChE. (Please refer to the examples found later in this document) QuiChE Reports As an example for this document, we processed our sales lead tracking system, Leadtrack through the QuiChE toolset. The resulting reports were, in some cases, 15 or 20 pages long, so we distilled the contents down to a sample size, or, in some cases, simply provided page 1 of the report. There are five standard reports supplied with QuiChE: 1. QUICHE-R1 : FILE USAGE BY PROGRAM View: Program This report shows all the programs in the BP files that QuiChE was directed to analyze. Programs are shown in alphabetical order, and for each program, the report shows all the files that program touches. Columns on the report are (A) File Variable (what internal variable does the program open the file to?), (B) File Name, (C) Open locations (line numbers at which the files are opened), (D) Read Operations (and their line numbers), and (E) Write Operations (and their line numbers). Note that DELETE's are listed in the Write Operations column. In the example, in the File Name column, the specification "@RUN-TIME" indicates that this program prompts for the name of the file during its execution. Not shown in example: If the program accesses a file it does not open, this is indicated by the term "NO-OPEN" in the File Name column. 2. QUICHE-R2 : PROGRAM EXECUTION BY FILE View: File What if you want to know where a given file is used throughout your system? This report shows every file name encountered during the QuiChE program analysis. For each file, the report shows the programs that touch it, and how. There are columns for Opens, Read Operations and Write Operations, along with line numbers in each program where these events occur. 3. QUICHE-R3 : SUBROUTINE USAGE BY PROGRAM View: Subroutine This report will answer the question: Where is subroutine XYZ called? It shows every subroutine or INCLUDE module and what programs use it. In the example, the first four subroutines are determined by a parameter table. The program LTPUPDATE assigns a subroutine name to each of these 'name holders' during execution. The next subroutine in the example, LTINCL, is actually an INCLUDE module, which the report indicates in the third column. This is extremely handy, because if you need to add global variables to an INCLUDE, you can check the list of affected programs at a glance! 4. QUICHE-R4 : FILE USAGE BY PROCEDURE View: PROC This is very similar to QUICHE-R1, except its for PROC's instead of programs. There's an extra column, where any programs executed by the PROC are indicated. (NOTE: R.O.I. Syngineering also has a version of QuiChE which will analyze PRIME INFORMATION(R) or Unidata(R) Paragraphs.) 5. QUICHE-M: MATRIX OF FILE USAGE BY PROGRAM View: Program & File This 'at a glance' report can be found on the wall in the System Analyst's office at many of our customer sites. The X and Y axis of this matrix are Program Name and File Name. Just follow a given line and you'll see a summary of the relationships. For instance, in the example, follow horizontally across from the program LTRCLSLS, and you'll see that it reads from the files LTFCUST and LTFTERR, but that it only opens the files LTFMAG, LTFSOURCE and LTFSTAT. (See legend at the bottom of the report for definitions of the codes.) The Matrix Report shows the file/program relationships instantly! And it can grow to any size. For purposes of demonstration, we've kept the examples simple, but if you had hundreds of files and thousands of programs, QuiChE would simply print all of the pages corresponding to the left-most part of the report, then it would go back to the top and print the next vertical section, and so forth. The result: a series of 'curtains' that could be taped together to produce one all-inclusive report that could be hung on the wall. These standard QuiChE reports are all written in standard English/Access/Inform. If your organization needed additional different reports, they could be easily produced. We know how much time and effort that QuiChE has saved us during both product development cycles and the various general consulting projects that R.O.I. Syngineering has undertaken in the last four years. We include QuiChE in the toolkit that we take with us to the customer's site. It has proven itself time and time again. Pricing QuiChE is priced at $2695.00 (exclusive of the HTML-creation feature). It is easily cost-justifiable on the basis of saved staff hours. Some of our clients have purchased it on the spot once they've seen it in action. Their M.I.S. staffs consider it indispensable! QuiChE including HTML-creation capability is priced at $3,295.00. Current users of QuiChE wishing to add this capability should contact us regarding upgrade pricing. Included in your purchase of QuiChE is one hour of telephone support to help you get started using the product. Most installed sites have not needed this support, but we want to make you aware that it is available. Inquiries from parties interested in resale opportunities are also invited. Thank you for your interest in QuiChE   Return to Top of Page Return to Home Page