Refactoring!

With a side of RDi

Charles Guarino
Central Park Data Systems, Inc.
@charlieguarino
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About The Speaker

Charles Guarino believes in the “power” of IBM Power Systems. His career
reflects his dedication and interest in bringing the platform and its solutions to
others and as a result has been recognized as an IBM Champion.

He is a member of COMMON’s Speaker Excellence Hall of Fame and a proud

recipient of the Al Barsa Memorial Scholarship Award. Additionally, he participates
on COMMON’s Strategic Education Team. Other professional endeavors have
included the roles of President and monthly Q&A host of the Long Island System
User’s Group LISUG (www.lisug.org)

Today, along with the team at Central Park Data Systems, he is serving
individuals and companies on a worldwide basis though his consulting work and
award-winning speaking engagements.

Charles is a true people person and can often be found at conferences sharing
his expertise on RDi and other IBM i topics.

Charles can be reached at [email protected].

LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/in/guarinocharles
Twitter - @charlieguarino

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 What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

Refactoring

Code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing computer code—

changing the factoring—without changing its external behavior. Refactoring is
intended to improve nonfunctional attributes of the software.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring

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 Technical Debt

Technical debt (also known as design debt or code

debt) is a concept in software development that reflects the
implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy
(limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that
would take longer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt

Code Smell

A code smell is any characteristic in the source code of

a program that possibly indicates a deeper problem.

Determining what is and is not a code smell is subjective, and varies

by language, developer, and development methodology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_smell

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 Code Rot

As code is continually modified and maintained over

time with possibly imperfect changes, more and more
bugs get introduced.

Worse, it gets more and more “correct but ugly.”

This reduces the integrity of the code, “rotting” it until it

eventually falls apart.

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/qu
estions/255866/what-is-meant-by-code-rot

What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

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 Bug fixing is NOT the main reason for program maintenance

Enhancements in functionality is the bulk of the cost

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 New functions and processes take too long to deploy

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Software is an expensive asset to maintain

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 Business requirements are always changing

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Take advantage of new advancements in software and hardware

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 What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

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Roadmap to a “perfect” program

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 Modularity

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Less global variables

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 No magic numbers and hard coded values

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No GOTO statements

GOTO

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 Well documented

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What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

21

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 When to refactor

“The best time to consider refactoring is before adding any

updates or new features to existing code.
Going back and cleaning up the current code before adding
in new programming will not only improve the quality of the
product itself, it will make it easier for future developers to
build on the original code.”

https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/engineering/code-refactoring-best-practices-
when-and-when-not-to-do-it/

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When **NOT** to refactor

If you are trying to get a product to

market within a set time frame.
Refactoring can be like going down the
proverbial rabbit hole: Once you start,
it can become quite time-consuming

https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/engineering/code-
refactoring-best-practices-when-and-when-not-to-do-it/

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 Rewrite vs refactor – the controversy continues….

https://sloboda-studio.com/blog/prons-and-con-for-rewriting-and-refactoring/

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Rewrite vs refactor – the controversy continues….

https://dev.to/bosepchuk/the-rewrite-vs-refactor-debate-8-things-you-need-to-
know-2hi4
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 Does the developer have the right skills to rewrite or refactor?

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Does faster hardware make up for poorly written code?

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 Where is the sweet spot?

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What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

29

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 Why “refactor” DDS? Benefits of DDL over DDS
• DDS is IBM i specific, SQL is universal
• SQL and DDL are widely taught, DDS is not
• DDS is stabilized, last enhancement was in V5R3
• DDL supports CLOB, DBCLOB, BLOB, XML, ROWID
• Identity columns
• Longer column names support, up to 128 characters
 See new ALIAS keyword for RPG!

• And other performance and I/O benefits

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Fun Fact! Alias keyword allows you to read long field names

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 Alias keyword is placed on the F spec or dcl-f statement

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Database normalization
1NF
• Each table cell should contain a single value
• Each record needs to be unique

2NF
• Must be in 1NF
• Single column primary key

3NF
Must be in 2NF
Have no transitive functional dependencies

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 A quick way to list all members in a source physical file

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/353424/list-of-source-members-in-a-
file-with-sql

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A quick way to list all object information in a library

https://www.rpgpgm.com/2016/01/using-sql-for-objects-statistics.html

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 How do I start – some ideas

RPG FREE

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Sample source code changes

Eliminate record level access where appropriate

using set processing with SQL

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 Some classic code smells

Duplicated routines

Contrived complexity – forced usage of complicated

design patterns where simpler would have sufficed

Too many parameters

Excessively long or short variable names

Excessively long line of code with many operators

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Using intermediate variables makes the code easier to read and debug

Instead of this:
If hours <= 40;
wages = hours * hourlyrate;
else;
wages = (hourlyrate * 40) + (hourlyrate * 1.5) * (hours – 40);
endif;
Consider this:
If hours <= 40;
Wages = hours * hourlyrate;
else;
overtimerate = hourlyrate * 1.5;
overtimehours = hours – 40;
wages = (hourlyrate * 40) + (overtimerate * overtimehours);
endif;

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 Some code changes for clarifying procedure calls

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/1106409
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What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

47

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 Examples of Field Renaming

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Examples of Extract Constant – Character value

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 Examples of Extract Constant – Numeric value

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Extract Procedure
This can be the start of something BIG…

Section of
Mainline code

Refactor
Extract Procedure

Copy local procedure

into separate module

Create service
program!!!

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 Example 1:
Housekeeping section should not be part of mainline code

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Example 2:
A process that can be reused in the same program

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 What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

57

Use iSphere tagging to store refactoring reminders

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 ACS Visual Explain

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ACS Index Advisor

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 RDi Code Coverage can help identify dead code

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Code coverage report

Can also compare and merge reports!

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 Code coverage report

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Free videos on how to use Code Coverage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roesIrpiIAs

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 Code Coverage command

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Simple idea for using Code Coverage

Call Program ABC

End with error?

Y
Call Program
N Rollback
If necessary ABC again using
CODE COVERAGE

Continue Processing

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 What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

69

e-GIT Perspective

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 Stage the file change

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Commit and Push

*** Because master repository was created as “—bare”

a *NEW* master branch will be created automatically

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 What We’ll Cover …

• Terminology

• Why refactoring?

• What is the end goal?

• Decision time

• Getting started

• Refactoring using RDi

• Other ways RDi can be useful

• Change management

• Wrap up

73

Code Refactoring!
With a side of RDi

Charles Guarino
THANK YOU!!!
@charlieguarino
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