Application modernization – Our World is Getting Bigger…

You may have noticed in 2007 that our familiar IBM System i Developer Road Map has become a Road Atlas! The basics remain the same, with five suggested steps to help an application, and a developer’s skills, evolve. However, the “Road Atlas” now covers even broader terrain, encompassing traditional development knowledge and an evolving landscape of advanced tools and technologies, including PHP and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

When you follow the recommendations in the Road Atlas, you simplify application maintenance, and it is easier to incorporate technologies as diverse as RPG, Java, and PHP to respond to your company’s business needs. You reduce manual processes by automating communications between applications and across platforms. You also ensure that your developers have the tools and skills they need to build and maintain your applications in the future.

We’ll quickly review the basic steps involved in modernizing existing legacy applications as outlined in the System i Developer Road Atlas, with a few words on how SOA fits into the picture. Along the way, I will point out how the ARCAD product suites can assist you on your journey. Let’s get on the road!

The Road Atlas covers a broad range of projects, from incremental changes, such as modernizing the user interface or expanding your use of SQL, to major efforts like Web-enabling business applications and modernization of the development organization itself

Our starting point is a traditional System i development environment with 5250 interfaces, RPG or COBOL business logic, and host-based application development tools. Each stage in the Road Atlas is a goal, as listed below along with some typical development activities:

Improve developer productivity - Use integrated development environments with graphical presentation, desktop capabilities, and integrated test/debug

Enhance the user experience - Take the application presentation to the next level with browser, client-server, and/or pervasive technologies such as PDAs.

Create a modular architecture - Adopt new technologies; partition applications into small, manageable components to improve reuse and simplify maintenance.

Integrate applications - Reduce manual procedures, such as re-keying data from one application to another; connect applications that exist as isolated processes.

Integrate business processes - Systems and applications outside your company work together, connecting with suppliers and customers to achieve efficiencies, better communications, and improved service.

Remember, each stage can be implemented separately, and all your applications don’t have to advance through all stages, depending on your business needs.
However, you will probably want to consider all of the stages as your develop your overall modernization strategy.

Now - in the context of the Road Atlas - let’s take a look at an important modernization objective for some companies - moving to SOA. We already established that to meet business needs, the information system must be flexible and responsive to organizational and business changes, which is precisely the ultimate goal of both SOA and the Atlas. Modernization projects also aim to reduce the cost of software changes resulting from business changes.

Applying modular principles in source code development (Road Atlas Stage 3) is the key step to making it re-usable. And, of course the more modular your code, the more flexible and maintainable it becomes. A shift toward using ILE and SQL is already a solid step in the direction of SOA. If you have already done this, you will be ready to develop your Web services.

Interoperability, obtained via standard Web Services, is the foundation of SOA (which brings to mind Road Atlas Stages 3, 4, and 5). Another fundamental aspect of SOA is the re-usability of existing applications (as in Stages 3 and 4).

I should mention here that you need not apply an SOA approach to the entire information system. You should select several fundamental functions to start, usually those that are likely, in time, to be shared with an external partner.

Also, as Philippe mentioned earlier, SOA is only good news for the System i community, since there is no need to scrap existing legacy applications. Rather, you can open up their communication potential by employing communication standards. With SOA, you capitalize on the value of your software assets by reusing them in a different context, with the potential to reduce costs for your company.

The Important Role of ARCAD Solutions
Our integrated product suites assist companies that are modernizing their applications based on the principles in the System i Developer Road Atlas in several ways. Let’s review them in the context of an SOA project.

The ARCAD-Open Repository is a true knowledge base on the existing information system. It safeguards your legacy application assets and provides a complete record of changes. (A repository is indispensable in SOA.) The ARCAD repository references any type of component, whether it is physically located on the System i or on a remote server, and whether the component comes from System i, UNIX, Linux or Windows. It catalogs all inter-component dependencies (or cross-references).

The first step in an SOA approach is, of course, an analysis of the existing system to identify which functions can be transformed into services. The ARCAD-Observer application mining suite is ideal for this task. It provides a wide range of tools for navigating into the internal architecture to reveal an application’s structure, including business rules, database links, internal program logic, and much more. At a higher level, we use the "macroscopic views" feature to obtain a view of the major functional domains in the information system. All this information can be produced as technical documentation in HTML format.

The ARCAD-Skipper suite controls the application change process and enables easy integration of the new technologies. With an SOA implementation, for example, you will inevitably end up with new components that are probably not located on the same platforms. Since we provide multi-platform cross-references, a JSP, a VB, C++, or any other program accessing a database on the System i is referenced by a link. This way, a developer making modifications on the System i side can warn his colleague on the PC side that updates will be necessary. It is even possible to automatically check that groups of modifications are consistent regardless of which platform the components came from.

ARCAD-Skipper performs the transfer to production with one single process and guarantees its security thanks to a powerful rollback function working across heterogeneous platforms.

Using tools like ARCAD-Skipper and ARCAD-Observer will support your application modernization journey, no matter what route you follow in the System i Developer Road Atlas. You will also benefit from gains in application quality, reliability, security, and a 20- to 30-percent boost in productivity along the way.
Some advice: don’t be afraid to start your journey; remember your situation is unique; and don’t forget to have a good vision of where you want to end up. Whether you are only going as far as adding graphical interfaces or all the way to SOA, we are here to support you!

ARCAD-Observer and an Analysis of the Existing System, prior to an inter-platform Port.

For several years now, ND Logistics, a long-standing AS/400 shop, has been experiencing high growth and serial acquisitions. The company has adopted the SAP package as the principal solution in its information system, as a replacement for the bulk of their native AS/400 applications.

With SAP residing on Windows servers and Oracle databases, and to avoid a proliferation of platforms to administrate, the decision was taken to gradually phase out the AS/400. The teams have also built up considerable Visual Basic expertise.

A major motivator behind the decision to port towards Oracle and Windows .NET, was a particular business application with specific functionality not provided by SAP - and also requiring an interface to SAP.

Before deciding on the launch of a porting project, a Feasibility Study phase was needed. This study was entrusted to Unilog Logica CMG company who made recommendations on the approach and the use of the ARCAD suites for the comprehension and analysis of the existing system.

With the design and programming models between the native AS/400 and .NET being so totally different, and to ensure the longevity and maintainability of the migrated application (business services, SOA architecture, adherence to .NET concepts, etc.), this project was far from being an automatic code-to-code migration.

The key to the success of this port was therefore to extract the specifications of the existing native iSeries application before translating them into specifications for the target application.

The study started with a restricted pilot set of components corresponding to a coherent branch of the application. Once proven, the same method could then be applied to the entire application.

While the application functions offered some extremely viable services, the sheer age of the application, maintained over many years without any Software Configuration Management tool, meant that a prior audit step on the supplied libraries was needed. This would select the objects and their corresponding sources, and build a reference first from the components from the pilot set, then from the full application.

The ARCAD Application Audit functions expose any anomalies in the application configuration including, for example, the inconsistencies between sources and objects, between ILE components, errors in parameter-passing between programs and between procedures, risks of regression and errors during impact analyses. These same functions enable ARCAD to guarantee the integrity of the information system throughout its lifecycle.

The ARCAD-Open Repository automatically references the objects, sources, fields and procedures and their complete set of links in the Integrated Repository. These include cross-references between programs, between programs and fields, between fields and source lines, between fields and variables… and also database relationships. It is therefore a true application knowledge base, a productivity aid for consultants when extracting business rules.

The ARCAD-Observer suite, based on the Integrated Repository, acts as a powerful system for graphical navigation within the Information System. With ARCAD-Observer, the Unilog Logica CMG company consultants could understand the workings of the application in a graphical and interactive way, including program calling chains, workflow diagrams, flowcharts and impact analyses.

Providing an instantaneous and overall view of the internal application architecture, ARCAD-Observer has also enabled Unilog Logica CMG company consultants to automatically generate technical documentation and export the application data model into the Oracle SQL dialect.

The ARCAD solutions are designed to accompany the processes of application development, test and distribution - during inter-platform migrations, and whatever the target system.

ARCAD Expands US Operations; Opens New Office

ARCAD’s commitment to growing our US business in mid 2006, and the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time to take advantage of market opportunities, have led to our tremendous US expansion in 2007. Exciting developments so far this year include the relocation of our US headquarters to Peterborough, New Hampshire.

One may ask, why choose Peterborough as the location of ARCAD’s new US office? You may want to check out a recent article in IT Jungle, “Arcad Positions for Growth in Change Management” that answers that question and talks about our future business direction.

For more than five years, the ARCAD team recognized that the company had the potential to do well in the United States, thanks to our solid product offering. To grow our US business, we needed experienced US-based staff, infrastructure to support our growing customer base, and, of course, increased efforts to generate market awareness of our company and its products. In 2006, we embarked on a plan to accomplish these objectives.

Late last year, the sale of SoftLanding Systems opened the door for a strong third player in the US change management market, and we were happy to take on that role. It also enabled us to quickly acquire a number of new team members with many years of experience managing change in System i and multi-platform development environments. With all of the required elements in place, we are very well equipped to provide exceptional support to our current – and future – US customers. Our Peterborough-based technical support, training, and sales staff members are energized and at your disposal!