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XPEDITER Is the First Line of Defense for Credit Union

When applications need to be up and running 24x7, time is crucial in problem resolution. XPEDITER helps developers at Pentagon Federal Credit Union quickly figure out how application source code works and how to fix it when it doesn't.XPEDITER/CICS Developers can test and debug CICS applications that access DB2, and can review, edit, or create DB2 test data with the DB2 File Utility .

Like most companies in the banking industry, Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PFCU) relies on Hogan financial applications as the mainstay for its day-to-day business operations. These applications are written primarily in COBOL with some Assembler code. Other applications the credit union uses include credit bureau software from Bureaulink, Disk IRS, Disk ARP, and interactions with First Data Resources for credit cards and Datalink for mortgages.

PFCU has established some aggressive growth objectives for itself over the course of the next 10 years. One of these objectives involves planned upgrades to newer releases of the z/OS operating system. But the credit union could not secure a guarantee from the provider of its debugging software that the tool it was using would continue to work properly with the proposed upgrades.

That wasn't the only concern PFCU had with the tool. There were numerous quirks and idiosyncrasies that developers had to contend with. For instance, the debugger wouldn't accept "Go Back"-a common coding statement that is used frequently in the Hogan application. Lou DeCarlo, director of applications management for the credit union, says, "Any program we wanted to test, we had to first go into the source code and change all the 'Go Back' statements to say 'Stop Run' instead. Then we could file the program. That was becoming a problem."

Ron Tschida, software engineer, agrees. "You couldn't just compile a program source module," he says. "You had to pull it down first, make a change to it and then test it. The problem is that once you change your source module in any way, you potentially change the way it's working. What was happening was that somebody would put in a 'Stop Run' and forget to take it out. The code then got into production and caused problems because Hogan requires the use of 'Go Back'."

A Robust, Adaptable Debugging Tool

Tschida has been with PFCU for a little over a year and found the credit union's debugging tool cumbersome to work with. At his previous employer, he used Compuware XPEDITER and suggested to management that they take a look at the product as an answer to the problems they were experiencing.

After checking out the tool and realizing that it was indeed a robust product and fully z/OS-compatible, DeCarlo decided to purchase XPEDITER as a replacement for the competitor's product. "We all jumped for joy around here," laughs Tschida.

"XPEDITER's a great debugging tool," says DeCarlo. "It's already saved us countless hours of time fixing code." Tschida agrees. "XPEDITER gives you a wider range of options when you're actually in the code running through a program," he says. "And I can personally say it's saved me numerous hours of effort trying to debug programs or processes." With XPEDITER, Tschida was able to compile a half dozen programs, walk through the process, easily pinpoint exactly what was happening and make the necessary code changes.

"With XPEDITER, we're literally closing the problems as fast as they're being written up." —Ron Tschida, Software Engineer, Pentagon Federal Credit Union

Making Short Work of the Debugging Process

Tschida is impressed with XPEDITER's efficiency and time-saving abilities. "On one project," he says, "what would normally have taken me two to three days of work to put dumps in, took me only two hours. I walked through the program with XPEDITER and changed some values as it went through-on the fly. You can do that with XPEDITER-you don't always have to have the exact data conditions."

"With XPEDITER," says Tschida, "you can get the data conditions once you get into the program to set up your exact situation-which saves you from having to go out and set up test conditions. That's a tremendous time saver." According to DeCarlo, an added advantage is that "XPEDITER lets you visually see whether code is getting executed or not. Have you ever finished a job and can't remember whether you went through a certain section of code or not? With XPEDITER, you're sure."

Both DeCarlo and Tschida agree that another advantage XPEDITER has over its competition is that it provides developers with the ability to debug a program they may not be familiar with. "XPEDITER certainly helps you understand how the code's working. And because you know the flow of the program-especially if you didn't write the program-it helps you understand the whole logic flow," Tschida states.

A Tool That Supports Future Endeavors

XPEDITER is now used on a daily basis at PFCU. "Since it's been installed, I don't think a day's gone by that I haven't used it," says Tschida. The tool has had a positive impact on productivity at the credit union as well. "If you look at deadlines being missed," DeCarlo says, "it's amazing. There are no deadlines missed anymore."

DeCarlo and his team are presently in the midst of rolling out a new, GUI Customer Service Representative (CSR) product, which is host-based through Hogan. Part of the CSR product is pre-packaged software, although a lot was developed in house.

Even though the competitor's debugging tool was used initially in the process, XPEDITER is now used exclusively to fight the inevitable problems that occur in production. "With XPEDITER, we're literally closing the problems as fast as they're being written up," says Tschida. "We figure out what needs to be changed, make the changes and turn it over."

Sharing the Good News

Both DeCarlo and Tschida say they would highly recommend XPEDITER to anyone who needs to debug programs quickly, accurately and on the fly. "XPEDITER simplifies the debugging process," Tschida quietly states. "And anyone who's in this business-you know, who has to fight fires-knows that any tool you can trust to have at your disposal to simplify the process is definitely worth looking into."

"Besides," says DeCarlo, "It sure beats putting dumps into programs." Not to mention, forgetting to take them out.

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