Visual DateScope 2000 Fact File

VDS2000 automates the tasks that would otherwise require manual intervention. Adopting an automated approach accelerates the conversion process, provides a framework for control, and reduces the risk of human error. The VDS2000 tool-set consists of two primary components, the Scanning Application Component and the Date Function Library Component. These components assist in date identification/impact analysis, renovation, testing, and debugging.

Date Identification Process

The Scanning Application Component, consists of an executable application that performs an initial pre-scan through the Visual Basic or Excel/Access VBA source code extracting the declarations (or definitions) of all the main elements (tokens) that make up a Visual Basic project. You can add numerous Visual Basic projects to the catalog, allowing a repository and date scan of entire systems or of subsystems.

These tokens include the declaration of any controls, DLLs, constants, global variables, modular level and local variables, User Defined Type (UDT) names and element names and any function or procedure parameters. The Scanning Application Components also scans for the many intrinsic Visual Basic date functions and procedures, such as Now, DateDiff, and CVDate.

The Scanning Application Component provides database support by examining the internal structure of any ODBC or JET database, searching for date-related columns or fields and adding these to the repository.

Most date scanning applications will simply search program files for a predetermined set of date-related keywords. The Scanning Application Component recognizes the need for business domain knowledge by allowing the repository to be extended to include user-defined tokens. A scanning application that cross-references a fixed set of date-related keywords would run the risk of entirely missing a business domain date-related variable such as sEffectiveFrom.

A hierarchical repository display ensures that the user can work through the components of each project in a logical format and visualize the completion of each logical unit. Compare this with the chore of manually trudging through thousands of lines of code unaided and with no physical indication of work completed—chaos!

The Scanning Application Component provides a Results repository (sorted by module and procedure) of all date-related occurrences identified within each of the specified projects. You can print the repository or use it directly for renovation. (See the next section, "Renovation Process", for more details.) Using the repository of date occurrences, you can return to the Visual Basic project knowing each identified line of code in need of possible modification.

The Scanning Application Component provides an automatic update of the source code with annotations marking each of the identified date occurrences. By automating the majority of the Date Identification process, it is possible to increase accuracy because the risk of human error is reduced. The completion time for the whole process is a fraction of the time it takes to run a manual scan. Consider an average Visual Basic project consisting of 15,000 lines of code. Taking an average of four seconds per line, this could take up to two days to complete for the identification of just one application!

Renovation Process

Visual DateScope 2000 provides a structured and consistent approach to problem solving.

Having identified all date-type occurrences within a system, the process now turns to the renovation of those date occurrences. Using Visual DateScope 2000, you can modify the code directly from within the scanning application.

Renovations can take place without ever having to load Visual Basic, which provides a self-contained conversion environment. There is no context switching.

Year 2000 Library

Once the identification of dates is complete and a method is in place to modify those dates, the question arises as to what to do with the date occurrences. The Date Function Library Component in the Visual DateScope 2000 toolset consists of a library of Year 2000-related date functions designed to erase the threat of the Year 2000 problem in your Visual Basic code. The library has the following features:

• Fully-tested functions appropriate for countless Year 2000 scenarios.

• Consistent approach to fixing date code.

• Completely generic, supporting international dates.

• Handles incorrect input values that are not dates. The reason for this is simple: many companies will hire contract or part-time staff to help in their Year 2000 conversion projects. It is possible that these programmers have little experience in either your business domain or in the Visual Basic language itself. The Year 2000 library therefore tolerates incorrectly applied "fixes."

Testing

Although VDS2000 does not test changes, it will certainly increase testing productivity and accuracy. For example, when changing a line of code from within the Scanning Application Component, VDS2000 will automatically add a line of debug code into your source code immediately before your change, if required. Comparative analysis ensures the complete execution of all changed lines of code. An additional debug testing file can be created that shows the "Before" and "After" values of converted dates.

All the debug calls inserted into your code can then be easily removed from within VDS2000 (for production environments).

Information Packs

Contact [e-mail] for your information pack, which contains evaluation copies of both Visual DateScope 2000 and VBA2000.