I wrote a couple of items about technical debt back in November (
here and
here). Sometimes you don't choose to create debt for yourself, sometimes it's inherited. In technical guises, debt can be inherited when teams merge, for instance.
In such circumstances, it can be difficult to know how much debt has been inherited. In these cases, reverse engineering tools can be of use. I'm thinking in particular of
Complementsoft's ASAP.
ASAP takes SAS/BASE source code and produces process flow and data flow diagrams. In other words, it works in the reverse direction to tools such as Enterprise Guide and DI Studio - these tools allow you to draw flows and then the tools generate SAS/BASE code from your diagrams. ASAP takes your code and produces diagrams.
In fact, ASAP can read your program source code or your SAS log. Reading the log is especially useful when you're using macros with conditional logic that will generate different SAS/BASE code dependant upon input data.
In addition to creating diagrams from your code and logs, ASAP has an in-built editor and remote code-submission capabilities, so it can form a complete code development and execution environment. And, it allows you to quickly skip between nodes in diagrams and the associated DATA step or procedure in your source code or log.
There aren't many SAS-related third-party products available to SAS customers. ASAP is one of the few and I'm pleased to be able to give it a mention in the
NOTE: blog. If you'd like to see more, take a look at the
"demo" on the ComplementSoft web site, and take advantage of their
free trial.
