Why are objects external to the Application sometimes visible as Transaction End Points?
When more than one Application is analyzed in the same "triplet" of CAST AIP schemas, you may find that rules created for Transaction End Points in a specific Application contain results from both Applications. This is expected behaviour and is due to that fact that objects that are external to an Application (i.e. outside the Application boundary) are always included for Transaction End Points.
Status of transactions involving end-points that are external to the Application
It is possible to define external objects as end-points. These end points can also contribute to a transaction, however, CAST does not recommend configuring multiple external end points to contribute to a single transaction.
External objects are not visible in the Dashboard schema, therefore if the transaction has end-points external to the application, these won't be visible in the transaction details (Enhancement node). The fact that these external end-points are not sent to the Dashboard schema when they are added or deleted to the graph of the transaction, is because some other object has been changed in the graph of the transaction so they will impact indirectly the status of the transaction. But when they are modified they won't impact the status of the transaction because they don't have any checksum in the Dashboard schema. Most of the time it is not possible to see if an external object is modified.
End point calls allow to identify transactions for function points counting purposes. In addition to that, end-points that contribute do impact AFP counting values by adding FTR and DET values to transactional functions. AEP count for a given transactional function is calculated by multiplying its AFP count by a Complexity Factor and as such, contributing end points can impact AEP values - however, they do not have any influence on the full call graph and its nodes' status.
Thus, having a transaction configuration rule that captures contributing end-points can lead to new values for AFP and for AEP, even if the transaction call graph is unchanged (because the objects marked as end-points were already there and have not been changed).
External objects not visible in the Enhancement panel
External objects are not present in Application modules and therefore are not copied into the Dashboard schema. This is why they these objects are not visible in the Enhancement panel and their status cannot be determined. It is therefore not recommended to capture external objects as end- points that contribute to transactional functions' AFP count.
Visibility of status of datafunctions
It is possible to view whether a datafunction is external or not by using the AFP Calibration node > Transaction Functions node, right-clicking a transactional function and selecting View datafunctions called by this transactional function. The Scope column indicates the status of the datafunction:
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