VE 2016 Includes a New Oracle parser

Oracle PL/SQL code analysis

VE 2016 now includes a new Oracle code parser that can analyze PL/SQL Code, as well as DDL statements (create tables, etc.).

It supports:

  • Analyzing Oracle code only, as well as a combination of PowerBuilder + PL/SQL Code. You can now browse front-end (PB) and back-end (Oracle) seamlessly, and better analyze their dependencies.
  • Extracting your code automatically from the database, or reading it from files, depending on your work methods.

As for PowerBuilder, we are leveraging this information to provide a full feature set, for graphical exploration, documentation and code review. If you are developing or maintaining a large set of PL/SQL code, feel free to contact us and tell us about your needs. We’re always willing to learn more and extend the VE features.

Calls to tables and columns

Visual Expert 2016 analyzes dependencies between the PB code and the database more deeply than in previous versions.

Until now, VE was able to tell which component/line of code was referencing tables and columns.

We are now categorizing calls to tables and columns by type (Select/Insert/Update/Delete), in order to filter them whenever you need. For example, you can check-out this article about filtering calls to tables/columns by type of access.

Moreover, we can now identify the type of the reference inside a SQL statement, depending on its location in the query. For instance, an Update statement can reference a column in its WHERE clause, which does not mean it is updating this column, but only reading it… This allows to better identify which component is updating, deleting or reading a given table or column. We intend to leverage this information to improve existing treeview and documentation features, as well as provide additional ones, like CRUD Matrix.

PowerBuilder, Oracle, VE 2016