Fresche Overhauls X-Analysis With Web UI, AI Smarts
Summary
The product has undergone a major overhaul and now sports a new Web user interface as well as hooks to popular AI models to provide code explanation and documentation capabilities for RPG applications. The tool includes cross-referencing, documentation, design recovery, re-engineering, and code generation (EGL and J2EE) capabilities, and counts companies like Fiserv, Mazda, Siemens, and Halliburton as users. The software features hook to LLMs from either OpenAI or Anthropic, which enable users to use natural language commands to essentially drive the X-Analysis product and tap into its impact analysis capabilities, Clark says. “I wish I’d had something like this years ago, when I landed in a spot like that and had to figure out some of the meanest programs, which needed constant attention.” While there are other cross-referencing or impact analysis tools available in the IBM i market, few offer the full breadth of capabilities that X-Analysis does, Clark says. “Those kinds of tools are typically not available in some of those more rudimentary impact analysis tools.” Specifically, one component of X-Analysis dubbed “application areas” can help developers to understand how their legacy code is structured and to restructure the business logic in such a manner that the functionality can be replicated in the modern, microservices-based way, according to Clark.