Notes on Tracer 2000 |
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| I originally intended to review Tracer2000 4.0 from Fidelity Technology Solutions.
So I loaded the evaluation copy from Fidelity and read the help file on how to use the
tool. But, by the time I understood the fundamental process and ran the tool through an
PowerBuilder application, I knew that this wasn't the tool I would recommend to solve year
2000 problems in PowerBuilder applications. This initial disappointment with
Tracer2000 discouraged me from investing more time in exploring it further. Essentially, I
gave up. Since I have not used the product enough, I will not review it. But here are some notes explaining my disappointment with this product. Please note that my opinion about this product is greatly influenced by the availability of a much better tool in the market for PowerBuilder - PB2000 from ServerLogic. Hence, I will try to explain Tracer2000's shortcomings with respect to PB2000. PB2000 has been reviewed in the August 1998 issue of PBDJ. My opinion about PB2000 is similar and there is little else that I can add to it.
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| Tracer2000 only works with Text files | |
| The Fidelity web site stated that it supported PowerBuilder. I had
expected at least some sort of specialized support for PowerBuilder applications and
objects. But the fact is that it is not geared towards any specific language or tool and
can work with any language where the source code can be converted into text files. For
common development tools like PowerBuilder there is bunch of utilities on the CD-ROM for
converting source code to text. PB2000, on the other hand, has been designed for PowerBuilder. It understands PowerBuilder applications and objects well. It works directly with PowerBuilder PBLs. It may be converting these to text files behind the scenes, but that is not my concern. At least I don't loose my perception of a PowerBuilder application and it's objects.
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| Tracer2000 is just a generic scanner | |
| All Tracer2000 really does is take a bunch of text files and scan them for
a set of patterns. It comes with it's own set of predefined patterns and you can add your
own. When it's done scanning it produces a list of lines which match the patterns. It has
no clue what is wrong with these lines of code or how to correct the problem. That's your
job. I scanned two PBLs with 21 objects, 1.48 MB of code with the 103 predefined patterns and it spewed out 1575 lines for me to analyze. Awww...give me a break! Do you think it's realistic to expect a person to remember every date issue in PowerBuilder and apply it with precision to every single suspect line of code? PB2000's search patterns are much smarter, resulting in far less numbers of lines to analyze. And when it encounters a match it will hint at the possible problem and also suggest remediation. A very good document accompanies the tool that has a detailed list of date issues in PowerBuilder applications and the suggested remedy for each.
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| No in-place remediation | |
| So, when you finally do find some erring code in the application, to
correct it you must open the object in PowerBuilder. Again, compare this to PB2000 where
you can correct the error right from inside PB2000. Cool huh?!
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-Jiggy, 02 Sept 1998 |
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