Best Practices on how to use the Field Expansion Report

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Introduction

Field Expansion Report presents the relationships among the resources of an application so that the impact of a field expansion operation can be understood. Field Expansion tracks the format of the data through all possible statements to understand the possible impact of a format change.

Purpose

The goal is to understand the impact of modifying the format of data that might flow through programs by limiting the expansion depth and to reiterate the process at every cycle. After the first cycle, it is recommended to create an exclude list for the items that are not related to the starting variable.

Running with no depth might be time consuming. It takes a long period of time to generate the report and it is difficult to read the information present in all pages.

Basic Principles

As a best practice, it is highly recommended to start running the report with a small depth, for example you can use 5 as a value.
Figure 1. Select Analysis Target Window
This image shows the Select analysis target window.

Once it is generated, start to analyze the report and it is recommended to create an exclude list for the items that are not related to the starting variable (e.g. written into the same message or log record).

Note:
  • The exclude list prevents the report from expanding to other content domain and inflate the report with unwanted results.
  • It is highly recommended to create the exclude list as a simple text file and have it loaded whenever the report on the same inputs is executed.
Figure 2. Excluded Variables Window
This image shows the Excluded Variables window.

Run the report again by increasing the depth to 10 and by loading the exclude list.

Analyze the report again and if needed update the exclude list with the new items that are not related to the starting variable.

Perform these steps until you obtain a simplified report that can provide the necessary information.