Introduction to analysis configuration options

The CAST Management Studio has three levels at which analysis configuration options can be set:

Auto-configuration validation

Technology / Application level

Using the Technology level or Application level options, validate the Analysis settings for JEE packages. Make any update as required. These settings apply to the Technology or Application as a whole (i.e. all Analysis Units):

Analysis Unit level

To inspect the auto-generated analysis configuration, you should review the settings in each Analysis Unit - they can be accessed through the Application editor:

Technology options

The available options for configuring an analysis are described below. Note that some options are not available at specific levels (Technology/Application/Analysis Unit):

Source Settings

This tab and its child tabs (Java, Resources and Web Application) show the location of each type of source code in the JEE Analysis Unit - this is determined automatically by the CAST Delivery Manager Tool. You should, however, review the configuration and make any changes you need (click to enlarge):

Java tab

Resources tab

XML / properties files

These options manage the location of your XML and .properties files.

Web Application tab

Web Server

Analysis

The settings in this tab govern how the source code is handled by the analyzer (click to enlarge):

Java

Web Application

This section governs the settings that will be applied if your JEE project is defined as a web application:

Enable JEE Web Profile Analysis

JEE (Servlets/JSP) version used by the application

The analyzer will assume that that latest Servlet/JSP version has been used to compile the application source code.

Use the drop down list box to choose the correct option if your application source code uses an older version. It is possible to obtain the JSP version in use by opening the application's web.xml file and locating the DTD version used to define the servlet - this is the servlet version. The servlet version is 2.3 in the example below:

<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC
   "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
   "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">

Using this information, see the table below for equivalence:

Frameworks

The Framework section governs the analysis settings used when a specific Java framework is present in your source code. These pre-defined settings are designed to address specific recurrent issues during analysis and correspond to default Environment Profiles. Each framework has an associated drop down list box with various options:

JPA (Hibernate), Struts and Spring

By default, the option for these Frameworks will be set to "Latest". In other words, the analyzer always assumes that you are using the latest available release supported by the JEE analyzer extension. You can override the default setting if required:

Web Service (WBS) Version and EJB2 (Enterprise Java Bean) Version

Auto discovery and configuration of Web Services (WBS Services) and Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) is not supported. The CAST AI Admin will need to gather the required information from the application team or inspect the delivered source code to determine the proper configuration of these parameters. Then a decision will need to be made to select the correct version of each:

Other frameworks

Other frameworks, such as those listed below are always handled "out-of-the box":

• EJB3, 3.1, 3.2
• JSF
• CDI
• Common-logging
• Dom4
• JUnit
• Log4J
• MX4J
• CICS ECI/CTG

When unsupported frameworks (i.e. not supported out-of the box) are part of the delivery, a Custom Environment Profile needs to be created to enable correct processing. To identify unknown frameworks or custom frameworks, there are various methods:

• Find all the XML files and look at the DTD they are referring to. This allows you to find frameworks like Spring, Hibernate... (You can use UltraEdit or a grep command to find the pattern DTD inside XML files in one go). Examples:

<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC 
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 2.0//EN" 
"http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-2.0.dtd"> 

<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC 
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 2.0//EN" 
"http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-2.0.dtd">

<!DOCTYPE daoConfigPUBLIC "-//iBATIS.com//DTD DAO Configuration 2.0//EN""http://www.ibatis.com/dtd/dao-2.dtd">

<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN" "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">

• Look at the libraries: the names of the libraries can give you an indication. Examples:

• Look at the different extensions used throughout the entire application. This information will also allow you to verify if the default extension list used by the analyzer to parse client and server source code is complete.Examples:
  • .jhtml: for Java HTML (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JHTML). This is used with Dynamo, a Java-based Web application server
  • .jspx: JSPX pages are a special type of JSP page: They are pre-processed by the JSPXServlet, and converted into regular JSP pages (See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28235/should-i-be-doing-jspx-instead-of-jsp
  • .jspf: for JSP Page Fragment
  • .jrxml: for Jasper Report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JasperReports#JRXML)

Text Replacements

This section enables you to define Regular Expressions (that match character strings in your selected files) that you want to replace with other text:

• Click the Add button to add a new line to the table listing the Text Replacements
• Double click the new line in the table and a hidden section will appear in which you can enter the details you require:

• Enter the Regular Expression in the Regular Expression field.
• Chose the type of Regular Expression in the drop down list:
  • Perl (default format) - Specifies that when a regular expression match is to be replaced by a new string, that the new string is constructed using the same rules as Perl 5.
  • Sed - Specifies that when a regular expression match is to be replaced by a new string, that the new string is constructed using the rules used by the Unix Sed utility in IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), Shells and Utilities.
  • Tcl - Specifies that when a regular expression match is to be replaced by a new string, the text that matches the regular expression will be replaced by the replacement text.
• Enter the text you want to replace the Regular Expression with, in the Replacing Text field.
• The new line in the table above should now be populated with your changes:

Production

Data to generate

If the maximum number of function analyses is reached, this will be logged.
File analysis too complex. Next function calls will not be followed by a function analysis if the function has already been analyzed

Process Settings

Inference Engine

Dataflow

Execution

Dynamic Links

See the CAST Management Studio help for more information about this global option.

Platform Setting

Dependency settings

If the CAST Delivery Manager Tool did not detect any inter-Analysis Unit dependencies (i.e. Discovered dependencies) then it will create a "global" default dependency between JEE and JEE. CAST highly recommends that this default rule is removed if the deployed package contains more than three Analysis Units. In addition, CAST highly recommends that you avoid creating a custom JEE > JEE rule if the deployed package contains more than three Analysis Units.

This global default rule can cause the creation of inaccurate links between objects which has a knock on effect on Quality Rule results and on Quality Rule results and on Transaction flow.

Manual configuration

When the automated configuration fails or it is not possible (i.e. project build file format not supported), the CAST AI Admin must resort to an in-depth inspection of the source code to build the Analysis Unit and configure them manually.  For typical JEE applications this would require the identification of all application components including:

• A presentation layer
• A persistent/session layer
• A business layer
• (Optionally) a web service layer
• (Optionally) other components

Advanced J2EE Configuration

Please see the following pages for more information about advanced J2EE analysis configuration:

The discovering of frameworks, other than Hibernate, Struts or Spring, supported out-of the-box by CAST AIP, is based on pattern matching on the .jar files delivered. Configuration for those is a simple Yes (if a .jar file matching is found) and No otherwise. When unsupported frameworks (i.e. not supported out-of the box) are part of the delivery, a Custom Environment Profile need to be created to enable correct processing. See  Review Dynamic Links for further details about how to address missing links situations.