Frequently Asked Questions
| What versions of Gen are supported? | pathvIEw works with Gen 6.5 and later. |
| Is GuardIEn required? | No, GuardIEn is not required. However pathvIEw is integrated with GuardIEn to enable easy identification of test coverage for GuardIEn Change Requests, Release Packs and System Updates. |
| What application target platforms can I generate code for? | pathvIEw is available for the following application targets:
|
| What is the runtime overhead? | pathvIEw has been carefully designed to ensure a minimum runtime overhead. The capture of statements executed requires 1 byte of memory per distinct statement in the load module and a negligible amount of CPU. At the end of the transaction the statement coverage data is compressed and sent via TCP/IP to the pathvIEw Listener. This communication phase typically transmits a few kB of data and for local network access will incur a very low elapsed time overhead. Once the Listener has received the message, the socket to the application is closed enabling the application to terminate before the statements are then logged in the database by the Listener. |
| Is there any database access to pathvIEw from my application? | No, all of the database access is performed by the pathvIEw listener. |
| What components do I have to distribute with my application? | Only the pathvIEw runtime module. |
| Do I need separate Listeners for each target platform? | No, you only need to implement a single Listener, though multiple Listeners are supported for load balancing if required. |
| Do I need to run an MVS started task? | The MVS Listener can be run as either a started task or using CICS. |
| Does pathvIEw change the behaviour of my application? | No, the changes to the generated code to enable statement logging do not affect the behaviour of the application. |
| What are the complexity metrics produced by pathvIEw and what are they used for? | pathvIEw calculates a Cyclomatic Complexity count for the action blocks using the method originally developed by McCabe and with some alternative calculation algorithms. Research by IET indicates that the complexity count is a more useful predictor of testing complexity and potential errors compared with number of statements and hence can be used to prioritise testing efforts. See Cyclomatic Complexity and Gen |
| Do I need to generate the code with trace/debug support? | No, pathvIEw does not require the code to be generated with trace, but this is supported if you want to trace the code. |