Fresche Preps IBM i Customers for SQL Migrations

May 20, 2014 Alex Woodie

With its acquisition of Databorough and its highly regarded X-Analysis product last year, Fresche Legacy made it clear it viewed database modernization as a key component of its overall strategy. Now, by making a key database migration feature of X-Analysis available to a greater number of users, the company clearly is setting its IBM i customers on a SQL path.

The big news coming out of Fresche Legacy during the COMMON conference two weeks ago was the availability of the Automated Data Model extraction feature in X-Analysis Professional Edition. Previously, this feature–which is a critical first step in the process of modernizing RPG and COBOL code to use SQL DDLs instead of traditional DDS–was only available to users of X-Analysis Enterprise Edition.

It’s a small but meaningful change on the part of Fresche Legacy, which has come out strong in support of SQL database tools and techniques in the IBM i installed base. Professional Edition customers can get the Automated Data Model extraction feature as a free upgrade, thereby giving them a key modernization feature, according to Fresche’s vice president of corporate strategy Chris Koppe.

“After surveying the IBM i market and our customers, it is clear that to really take advantage of IBM i’s newest database and SQL features, documenting the relational data model is a critical requirement,” Koppe states in a press release.

Fresche Legacy jumped squarely onto the SQL-on-IBM i bandwagon in March, when it shipped a new release of X-Analysis that automated more of the DB2 for i modernization process. Specifically, X-Analysis version 10 automated the process of generating DDL from DDS code, in addition to other features that are useful during a migration, such as more fine-grained rules extraction capabilities.

“IBM i developers find that the manual work effort required to achieve this has proven overwhelming,” Koppe continues. “As a demonstration of Fresche’s commitment to the sustainability of IBM i and commitment to improving productivity for developers, we made the strategic decision to include the automated data model extraction functionality in the X-Analysis entry-level version.”

Fresche Legacy is also upping its targeting users of the Hawkeye Information Systems‘ cross-referencing and impact-analysis tool, called Pathfinder. The company says it’s noticed that Hawkeye customers have displayed “an urgent need for a modern graphical interface for application analysis and cross-referencing capabilities.” To that end, “Fresche is making X-Analysis available to Hawkeye users through a free upgrade,” the company says.

X-Analysis was launched by Databorough in 1989 as a cross-referencing tool for RPG coders. Over the years, Databorough expanded the product with business rule extraction, Java generation, and code migration capabilities. Today, X-Analysis contains hundreds of internal analytical tables and many hundreds of static analysis and re-engineering programs. For more info see www.freschlegacy.com.