eXplain

One of the greatest challenges in maintaining matured Cobol applications is onboarding new employees into existing projects. With eXplain, we are able to onboard new employees into ongoing development projects much faster and more efficiently. This enables us to gain speed, enhance quality for our customers, and simultaneously save costs in the onboarding process. eXplain has become an essential component of our toolchain in the Cobol field.

PKS’s eXplain enabled us to identify a considerable portion of code in our Natural and COBOL-based core banking system that was no longer needed, so we could fundamentally clean up and clear out the system. In addition, the documentation that was created automatically by eXplain meets our auditing requirements fully. Those are just two of the ways that eXplain supports us in our Core Banking System Stabilization project. I’d also like to highlight how pleasant it was to work with the expert PKS team, and how we appreciated the flexibility as we worked on the project, so we could always take Helaba-specific requirements into account.

Using eXplain has helped us reach a new level in various ways. We have not only become more innovative, but we also save time and money as documentation is created automatically. In addition, the clustering function will give us a better overview of our wide range of software components in the future. Working with eXplain is a real asset for our core business.

Here at Wesco we generally use Infor XA as our central ERP program. However, over the decades we’ve made lots of custom changes, for which we have developed many RPG programs. We’ve been using the PKS tool eXplain for several years so we can always have an overview of everything and react quickly and appropriately when something needs changing. eXplain simply makes it easier for us to develop software. We can identify dependencies at a glance and implement changes very securely. We wholeheartedly recommend eXplain and PKS.

eXplain gave us fantastic support when analysing RPG programs and process structure. The graphical presentation of links between programs/modules and IO tables works brilliantly, and the export options, such as to HTML/XLS or to a visual editor, help us continue to document the application. eXplain also helps us identify obsolete program elements and therefore clean up the source code. Our collaboration with the PKS team was always very open and constructive, and we were even able to contribute our own ideas for developing eXplain further.