The perfect solution for understanding the nuances of your database, ideal for:
Automatically discovering and documenting implicit relationships Automating the creation of a metadata layer for faster BI implementation Discovering referential integrity issues and the applications causing them Implementing optimal declarable relationships without disrupting existing applications
Most DB2 for i databases contain thousands of tables with implicit relationships buried in the code and/or in the minds of the developers. Revealing and using database relationships will provide you:
Properly understand the structure of the database Document this information to speed-up development, off-load key developers from routine tasks Ensure that this critical knowledge remains within your business Xcase for i will expose them in clear, configurable, auto layout, Entity Relationship Diagrams
Share this vision (customizable diagrams) within teams Speed-up analysis and integration of new resources Avoid redundancies created by ignorance
Make sure your database has the metadata necessary to implement affordable business intelligence: retrieved relationships will be used by Query tools (such as Web Query) to automate the definition of sophisticated queries.
Xcase for i, uses the discovered relationships to assist you in easily creating queries and views graphically and generates auto-maintained SQL code for their definition.
Referential integrity for the discovered relationships can be implemented at the database level. By moving relationship logic into the database, you shorten development cycles, guarantee consistent use of integrity rules and simplify your programs.
Current referential integrity issues are discovered. SQL statements to identify faulty data are automatically generated. The programs causing those errors can be identified and traced.
The database engine will use the declared relationships within the database, yielding improved performance in particular when they are based on Identity columns.
With its unique, data-centric approach, Xcase for i exploits all the information available in the meta, semantic and physical data to automate the discovery of the relationships hidden in the database.
Time, effort and risk of errors are reduced. Your team only has to validate the small set of relationships selected among the hundreds of thousands of possibilities.
At this stage your database is documented, and using the relationships defined in the model, you can easily generate complex views and compact yet coherent, Dev/Test databases.
Xcase for i helps you identify automatically structural anomalies, duplicated data, integrity issues and orphan data sources.
The database normalization process is fully assisted, allowing you to correct more efficiently the database.
Old applications continue running as before without modification even after the database has been normalized and relationships implemented
To obtain all the benefits of database relationship discovery and database normalization, relationships should be implemented in a modernized SQL database.
Xcase for i allows you to declare them in the DB and to disable them until you make sure that applications respect them. Automatically generated triggers allow you to discover those issues without breaking your existing applications.
When an implicit relationship cannot be declared in SQL, “Xcase for i Alternative Relationship” provides a solution. It will implement a functionally equivalent relationship providing flexibility and better performance, and allowing old and new applications to co-exist.
When your old applications are updated to use the new identity-based relationships, the triggers and the old Foreign Keys can be removed.
No time to handle a modernization project in-house? We also offer an affordable database modernization service that removes the work from your staff.
