Introduction

Each CAST AIP release provides new features which improve the value of the platform and justify an upgrade. However, there are a number of changes or improvements which can impact the measurement results/grades:

• New or improved Quality Rules to perform deeper analysis
• Updates to the Assessment Model, e.g. changes to rule weights, severity or thresholds. This can be mitigated by using the "Preserve assessment model" option during the upgrade.
• Improvements of the language analysis, e.g. more fine-grained detection of objects or links
• Extended automatic discovery of files included in the analysis

Analyzing the root causes of impacts to measurement results/grades

The following is a general description of the steps that should be taken in order to compare pre and post upgrade results:

• Step 1: Take a snapshot (including a source code analysis) with the previous release of CAST AIP before upgrading to the new release of CAST AIP
  • Check the list of applications to be analyzed, the list of files per application and list of SQL objects from the Analysis Service.
• Step 2: Compare the source code in version 1 (before upgrade) with the source code in the new version 2 (after upgrade)
  • Compare the list of analyzed files, list of files per application and list of SQL objects between the two Analysis Services
• Step 3: Compare the results of the application analysis and snapshot post upgrade. This can be done by comparing the snapshots available in the Dashboard Service to find the differences in:
  • Quality rules

  • Violations

  • Grades at Business Criteria level

  • Function Points

  • Transactions

  • Lines of code

• Step 4: Compare the data functions and transactions across the source Analysis Service and the target Analysis Service post upgrade.

Impacts of changes made in CAST AIP 8.3.0 on Quality Model results post upgrade

Removal of "non-unified" Quality Rules

In CAST AIP 8.3.x, all Quality Rules flagged as "non-unified" have been removed from the standard CAST AIP Assessment Model delivered with CAST AIP 8.3.x. These Quality Rules were not triggered by default, had to be manually enabled using a SQL query and all had "unified" (i.e. multi technology) equivalent Quality Rules. The impacts of this change are listed below:

• If you choose to retain your previous Assessment Model during the upgrade process, then any "non-unified" Quality Rules will be marked as deprecated and set to "Detached".
• When generating a snapshot with an Assessment Model that contains active "non-unified" Quality Rules (i.e. you have chosen to retain your previous Assessment Model during the upgrade process), these Quality Rules will not be executed, even if you have used the SQL query to specifically enable them.

Other impacts of changes made in CAST AIP 8.3.0

Removal of web technology analysis capabilities

The ability to analyze "Web technologies" such as:

• Image files (.gif, .jpg etc.)
• HTML files (.htm, .html, .htc etc.)
• Script files (.js, .vbs etc.)

has been removed from the .NET Analyzer, therefore after an upgrade to CAST AIP 8.3.x and the generation of a new snapshot on existing source code, you will find that analysis results will change:

• All web technology files will no longer be visible. These objects will be recorded as "deleted" in the post upgrade snapshot (this example is from a JEE analysis):

• Line of Code (LOC) Quality Measures will be impacted - there will be a decrease in the LOC count.
• Some Quality Rule grades may change.
• Intra-web technology links (i.e. between .HTML and .JS files for example) will be removed
• Any links between .NET objects and web technology objects will be removed
• Transactions and Function Point data may be impacted by this change.