Data Management Tools Continue to Earn Interest at Royal Bank of Canada

Today's banking customers expect high-performance electronic delivery channels, available globally, 24x7. While aggressively pursuing new e-business delivery channels to meet these demands, Royal Bank of Canada must take careful measures to ensure all new applications interface with existing ones.

Royal Bank's IT division relies on File-AID's broad range of functionality on a daily basis, to make more efficient use of its resources and perform data management projects more quickly and affordably.

After re-evaluating Compuware's products and other software products on the market, Royal Bank once again realized the value they get from File-AID.

"We couldn't even get the others' tools installed, much less up and running," says Jeff Price, project leader, Technology Development Support Services. "There's no comparison. We recognize Compuware's tools as some of the best in the industry."

Providing Solutions

Rather than simply providing tool support, Royal Bank's development team focuses on providing solutions for its internal customers. "We try to find the right combination of tools that allows the user to reach a solution," says Price.

For example, when the bank's business analysts performed business assessment tests in the past, they had trouble viewing data in the COBOL record layout format. "These people are business analysts; they're not technical in any way," says Price.

Mary Hayward, technical systems analyst in Technology Development Support Services, had the perfect solution. She introduced File-AID to business analysts, who now use the tool's browse facility—with its COBOL layout—extensively for insight into a file's field contents. "Analysts don't need to get a tech person involved," says Hayward, noting the time savings. "Now they have a tool to view data without help."

Improving Efficiency with Compare

Royal Bank's development team recently realized they could replace another vendor's tool and get better results from something they already had, File-AID's Compare function. "We find the Compare function in File-AID/MVS outperforms the other vendor's tool," says Price. "We gained huge savings in software costs, and improved functionality, because we can code these things in batch."

Ron Crockett, a direct deposit accounting (DDA) interface and test coordinator at the bank, also appreciates the Compare function. "File-AID's printouts are much easier to read than the ones we used for years. File-AID shows you the whole 'From' record, then the 'To' record and both are clearly marked with the changed section. Our old Compare interweaved the data," says Crockett. "DDA staff literally resides in File-AID on a daily basis. It's such a powerful tool."

Saving Time with Selection Criteria

John MacDougall, a technical systems analyst with Royal Bank Investment Systems, likes File-AID's Selection Criteria feature the best. "Our VSAM master files are very large. Let's say I need to select all of our Registered Education Savings Plans, and then I need to pinpoint all zero balances in those plans; the Selection Criteria feature pulls exactly what I need in minutes," says MacDougall.

Without File-AID, someone would have to search every record in hex, line by line. "Selection Criteria eliminates the chance for human error and saves so much time," says MacDougall. "I've gone from an hour or two to less than five minutes."

When working with large files, Royal Bank depends on File-AID. "These projects are simply not possible with any other tool. It's all or nothing; we have to use File-AID if we want to perform our regular, day-to-day routines," says Price. "And it's user-friendly, so new users are capable of editing files in five minutes to half an hour."

Integrating Applications with Cross Reference

Royal Bank's development team likes the transparent integration of Compuware's products, the way the team can easily move from one tool to another with the touch of a "hot key." For example, when Hayward's team needed to convert an old application, they used QAHiperstation for testing. "We first used File-AID's Cross Reference to modify the application's old, clunky screens and to create a test path. Then we used QAHiperstation to execute it," says Hayward. "The process is faster and more flexible, and the two tools really complemented each other."

Without File-AID's Cross Reference function, programmers would have to maintain a series of old CLISTs to edit test cases. Since the CLISTs were written so long ago, they are difficult for new programmers to understand. File-AID's Cross Reference function eliminated the maintenance process.

Making E-Business Easier

Another way Royal Bank is providing solutions for users is by making some of its old legacy applications, such as DDA and Canadian Savings Bonds, available on the Internet. These applications contain several master files, each with numerous data files. It's very important for developers to understand the primary function for each data file, what information is contained in it and how it relates to other files within the application.

File-AID allows developers who are unfamiliar with certain applications to immediately see data in record layout, so they can grasp the data relationships and concepts the file has used. "In Internet banking, when writing the COBOL code, users can immediately see the relationships between files within an application and from application to application," says Price.

Proving Its Worth

Like any large organization, Royal Bank must justify all product purchases. To ensure usage rates warrant software purchases, the bank regularly performs a series of usage tests on all of its software tools. Usage reports have shown that File-AID is the tool most frequently used by its developers.

Just like Royal Bank's development team, File-AID provides solutions that allow customers to tackle projects by themselves, quickly and easily.