DAL Usage

The DAL Usage tab shows the access to the DAL files within the Cobol programs in the current project. For each DAL file, the programs and the statement types that reference the file are shown and for each statement type, the occurrences of the statement (the file and location within the file) are listed.

To display the DAL Usage tab, go to Explore Projects tab and select DAL Usage from the Usage in Programs list of analyses to the right of the screen.

The central part of the screen displays the list of attribute filters. By default, all attributes are selected; deselect the ones that you do not want to use. The breadcrumb displays the selected projects, the selected attributes together with the filters set for each attribute.

Click the Filter field to the right of an attribute name and enter the filter that you want to use for the attributes' names. After you press Apply, only the elements that match the name filter are displayed in the Results area. Special characters can be used. For example:
  • * is used to search elements, by adding to it either prefixes or suffixes as in AAA* or *AAA.
  • , is used to search multiple elements as in AAA, BBB, CCC.
Note: The special characters * and , cannot be used simultaneously.

To limit the number of attributes of a certain type that are returned by the filtering operation, use the fields in the Limit column. The default limit is 50; the maximum limit can be set in the corresponding Usage Settings section from the Preferences dialog. For more information, see DAL Usage in Program Settings. The Context column displays the context of the filter operation where relevant. To the right of Attribute filters area, the list of projects is displayed.

Use Save to save the current filter configuration. Use Load to load a previously saved filter configuration.

By default, Enable levels limit is selected and the number of elements that are presented in the Results area is limited by the values set in the Limit column. If you deselect this option, the Limit column from the Attribute filters area disappears and the Results area displays all the results of the analysis. Press Apply to apply the selected filters. When the filtering operation is finished, you can use the black arrow button in the upper left corner of Attribute filters area to hide it and maximize the Results area. To see the DAL Usage parameters in a separate tab, use the arrow button in the upper right corner of DAL Usage tab.

The results of the filtering operation are displayed in the Results area. Use the search field to locate a specific element in the Results tree. Click the adjacent button find only annotated to filter the search results so that only the annotated elements are shown. In the upper right corner of the Results area, the following buttons are available:

Reorder current results, use this button to reorder the results using a different filter configuration. A dialog window presents the list of filters that were used to perform the initial filtering and you can set them in the desired order.

Expand all, click this button to expand tree branches.

Collapse all, click this button to fold all the tree branches.

Export Results to CSV File, use this button to export the results together with the used filter configuration.

Place the mouse cursor over a node in the tree to display a tooltip that presents the element category and name. When you select a tree node, the area to the right of the screen is updated to display the graphs, reports, and usage analyses that can be generated for the selected element. Also, the Properties view displays the information available for the selected element.

The following nodes are available:
Table 1. DAL Usage Tab nodes
Node name Description
DAL file Presents a list of the DAL files in the project. The information in the sub-tree under the DAL file represents where used information for the DAL file.
Program Opens the selected program at the first line.
Statement type This node represents the access type that is used to access the DAL file. If the access type is dynamic and cannot be resolved in the analysis stage, the access type “DAL: Dynamic_Function” is shown. Child nodes show the name of the source file and the location (line number) of the DAL function.

DAL Usage statement filtering

Starting with IBM® AD V5.1.0.9, the DAL Usage analysis has been expanded with an extra layer of filtering. It has been designed to locate more effectively specific statement types and filter them by using the new graphic user interface.

To navigate to the Statement Type Filter pop-up window, open the DAL Usage analysis and click on the All attribute present in the Filter column.

As a result, the Statement Type Filter pop-up window is displayed and contains specific statements that can be selected and filtered to any degree of granulation.

Click on Apply/Refresh to display only the selected statements.

Node pop-up menu

Select a node from the tree in the Results area then right-click to display the pop-up menu. The number of options available depends on the type of node selected. View analysis source and Copy options are available for all nodes. According to the selected node, several Collapse to … Level options might also be available.