Software Migrations Ltd.  (SML) are a company that has been at the forefront of the automated comprehension and migration of Assembler Language Programs for the last 30 years.

Our FermaT toolset is based on Formal Methods and the use of Infinitary First Order Logic. The underlying mathematics has been peer-reviewed at least fifty times over the years and verified in every case. These mathematics and their application within the FermaT toolset guarantee that the code produced is functionally equivalent to the original Assembler code. This includes our own Wide Spectrum Language (WSL)  Pseudocode, Cobol, C or Java.

The ability to identify a specific business transaction path through modules making analysis focussed only on the code that needs to be analysed for that specific business transaction – this reduces the analysis effort significantly

• Sheer Volume of code to review can be a major challenge in Assembler and TPF migration projects
• Semantic slicing allows us to only present the code relevant to a given input condition
• This is particularly useful for TPF as transactions are typically across a number of modules, so isolation of the code relevant to a particular transaction is a powerful analytical tool
• Semantic Slicing isolates the code specific to a given transaction across these programs, then separates it from the rest of the code and represents the whole transaction process as pseudocode

The Dashboard is a visualisation tool to provide insight into the processed code. It provides summary level information on; number of modules, lines of code and complexity. It also provides an overview of the relative size, complexity and distribution of the processed modules.

At a module level, it provides real insight into all of the detail of the module.

There are automatic links between the Flowcharts, WSL Pseudocode and Assembler to ease comprehension and to cross-check for a deeper insight

WSL Pseudocode can use customer translations of technical terms/data names to create more business type names and labels

WSL Pseudocode text is coloured to aid understanding the colours mean:

• Comments are grey
• Collapsed comment header lines are yellow-green
• TPF macro calls have a grey background
• WSL Keywords are blue (IF, DO, EXIT etc)
• Variables, fields, names are black
• Operators are crimson
• Strings are green
• Text inside curly brackets are {business descriptions of the previous statement}

This is an example of a module flowchart, it fully navigable and where the text is brown there are customer translations to more accessible business style terminology. Just toggle on the Tech, Business buttons above or on the text itself

Our goal is to accelerate getting the vast majority of code into the dashboard:

• To unlock the speed of FermaT processing we separate the timeline for Exception handling from straight through (Fast Track) automatic module processing
• SML has excellent analytics to keep track of progress and exceptions – Dashboard Integrity Tracker
• Modules are re-included when exceptions are resolved
• Typically 2-3 Million lines of code would take 3-5 weeks to Fast Track into the Dashboard

Fast Track Process:

• Receive Customer Code – Check and store modules etc.
• Set up customer specific environment for their Dashboard
• Initial processing to identify Missing Modules, Logic Errors and Modules that don’t restructure
• All modules with variances move to Exception Process
• Everything else circa 98% of all modules proceed along the FastTrack – as fast possible to the Dash board
• The Exceptions are picked up and dealt with individually in slow time – unconnected with the Fast Path but re-cycled to the Fast Path when resolved