Gentalk.biz - a blog about CA Gen

Finding CA Gen sessions at CA World 2010 @caworld2010

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:40:10 +0000

I tried to find an easy way of finding the CA Gen related sessions at CAWorld 2010. I’ve come up with an easy way of doing it:

Go here: https://www.ca.com/caworld/agendas/default.aspx
Click “Advanced Search”
Make the following selections:
1. Focus Area : “Mainframe”
2. Product : “CA Gen”
Press “Search”
Wait
Read all the session details !

Hope it works for you !

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Jumar Solutions’ advance notice

Gentalk Gaffer — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:04:40 +0000

Jumar Solutions are ISO and TickIT certified, but there’s more to come … just not sure what !

See here….

CA World 2010 Agenda now available

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:51:30 +0000

Here you can get the low-down on what’s happening at CA World 2010 – there are lots of CA Gen related content, speakers, demonstration by vendors, the EDGE reception and of course the social side !

Follow CAWorld 2010 on Twitter….

AKRA achieves CA Partnership status

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:48:02 +0000

Congratulations to AKRA, who have achieved CA Partner status – well deserved!!

Read the full press release here.

New CA CEO is Bill McCracken

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:11:59 +0000

CA Have announced their new CEO – Bill McCracken (here: http://www.ca.com/us/press/release.aspx?cid=227312) – read about his background here hopefully he will be as supportive of CA Gen as John Swainson was and will help the product and the community move forward!

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2010 is the year of Model-Based-Development

Gentalk Gaffer — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:25:22 +0000

…. so says this Tweet from Estefan Euler

…. but Gen has been doing it for years!

Seriously, though, Model-Based-Development may have “come home” this year with many conferences such as QCON London and CodeGeneration 2010 happening and focussing on it, together with an increase in interest from Microsoft.

I hope that this will be an increase in focus on CA Gen and what it can provide to the enterprise.

Application Modernisation

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:58:18 +0000

Exponents of application modernisation should see the Everware-CBDI slideshare slideshow (presented below)

Gen is sometimes cited as a target framework/toolset from modernisation (which I believe in this context includes only platform and toolset transitions), but the stages and concepts outlined in the slideshare are meaningful for ANY technology set.

Get the latest on application modernisation by following them on Twitter.

Further thoughts on MBD

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:12:11 +0000

I’ve had permission from DannySaro, the author of this comment to turn it into a proper post – he has many valid points – the discussion that will invariably ensue will be interesting …….

” I also love the work done by APG team. As you mention, they have a strong solution based on some of the most recent insights in model driven architecture. I will not pretend to understand the complete depth and breadth of their solution and all of the exciting things they will be able to do with it. But I wanted to make a comment on another aspect of model-based development which is maybe currently not that well served anymore (looking at it optimistically I should say ‘not that well served yet!’)

Let my base my comment on the current use of CA Gen. Well…, the business-oriented part of the CA Gen model is hardly used anymore, all the stuff listed under the planning and analysis submenus of the Toolset. There are various reasons for this, but probably the biggest reason is the fact that working with this business information was/is very much geared towards the IEF methodology and as we all know methodologies have moved along since the early nineties. That formal part of gathering business information, business requirements via analysis has much, much less focus in today’s agile methods. I think it is obvious that if you don’t spend time identifying and describing that information then how is it ever going to be entered into the mode?. The sad thing is that this information does have its use inside the model, it describes the business rules in an abstract technology neutral, even computational neutral, way. And those business rules then govern the downstream effects of what functionality is actually generated. That information also documents the business-IT alignment that everybody is searching for, again, this does have its value when one has governance and compliance in mind.

So where does that information gets stored nowadays if not inside the model? A lot of it is to be found in unstructured text and documents, user scenarios, use cases… And yes, it’s unstructured and therefore not very well suited to fit into a formal metamodel.

I think a possible solution lies in all the technologies that arise around ontologies. An ontology in general is defined as (thank you Wikipedia): ” the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.”…” In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain.”

That’s modelling, right? The technologies I mention are things like Resource Description Framework (RDF), RDF Schema (RDFS), Ontology Web Language (OWL) … These technologies allow to capture the information inside an unstructured text into a model. A model that is actually governed by its’ own metamodel. RDF and OWL models are very versatile. If you want you can have the definition of the metamodel defined in the same place as the actual model information. The metamodel can also be extended on the fly if some new concepts need to be documented. Models and metamodels can be merged without effort, and because the technologies are based on firm mathematical concepts like set theory, it is even possible to let inference engines run over these models and based on the information in the model and the (business) rules defined in the metamodel they can deduct new non-existing information.

The saying goes: every formal metamodel can be expressed as an ontology, but not every ontology can be expressed as a formal metamodel. So, as a Gen model can be expressed as an ontology, I am interested to find out how a Gen model could be populated by information contained in what would be regarded as fairly unstructured text, i.e. the user scenarios, the use cases, … mentioned above. If we could make that happen then we have again connected the business model, the business requirements with the rest of the application life cycle. We could then truly speak again of a “complete application life cycle”.

There you have it, I wanted to make a small comment, and see what happened…
If there are people out there that would also be interested in exploring how these technologies could contribute to the overall value proposition of CA Gen’s model-based development then please come forward! “

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ProgGen – Code Generation

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:18:41 +0000

I’ve long been a supporter of the work that APG is doing in the Gen space, specifically with promoting the use of Model Based Development. It’s good to see that they are exploiting the true strength of a Model-Based-Development environment – i.e. models for other purposes than originally designed – thus extending the range of possiblities and therefore getting more return of investment from those models.

They will be promoting their technology at CodeGeneration 2010 in Cambridge, UK.

I’d urge anyone with either an academic or professional interest in Model Based Development as a whole to attend this conference and hear what they have to say.

To connect with like-minded people to discuss Model Based Software Development, a great place is the SOMOMOSOEN group. There are some very informative papers which can be downloaded there.

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First release of 2010

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:23:24 +0000

IET got there first (as far as I know !!) with the first Gen-related release of the decade - with the new release of XTrace – read the release notes here.

Cartoon Capers

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:13:37 +0000

Just thought it would be fun to create a cartoon with a “Gen” flavour !

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Gen:2009 a year in review

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:33:08 +0000

Just like last year’s post around this time (2008 Gen:2008 – a year in review), I’m looking back to each month and highlighting a single post from that month to see how the Gen world has progressed in 2009

Jan Gen – 1st Impressions
Feb Gen APIs
Mar Gen-o-sphere
Apr New whitepaper from ARIKAN – code restructuring
May Wouldn’t it be good if…
Jun UK & Ireland CA Gen Users Day Review
Jul Ease of use
Aug APG gets the seal of approval from CA
Sep New German-speaking Gen user group
Oct CA Application Development Newsletter from CA
Nov Unbelievable – 50,000!
Dec Maybe I’ll raise a DAR!

I wonder what 2010 will bring – certainly with the release of r8 and CAWorld 2010, it should be an exciting 12 months !

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Leaving the NoughtIEs behind…

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:57:45 +0000

… is the strapline of the December edition of SpotlIEt – the IET newsletter – go grab it to see what they’ve been up to this year….

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Maybe I’ll raise a DAR!

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:52:52 +0000

I have been looking at Transaction Enabler lately (unix environment) and know that you can control the user funnel and asynchronous daemon at startup by using a bunch of parameters – this is good simply becausae the funnel/daemon infrastructure can be tuned to your installation – memory, load modules, etc…

But what you can’t do (apparently) is stop the asynch daemon and user funnel by sending it some sort of signal – you have to use the unix “kill” command which (in my opinion) is a little scrappy.

Does anyone else feel that this might warrant and enhancement request ?

What you should be able to do is (after starting the UF, for example), be able to use a control tool to send it a signal to close down – either with or without flushing currently in flight transactions.

Maybe I’ll think about it over Christmans and raise a DAR anyway – but I’d be interested to see what others think.

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Youtube Feedback

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:02:46 +0000

In this post, I asked readers if it would be a good idea to follow QAT’s example and put some Gen-related content on YouTube.

All the votes I had stated “Yes” – they’d like some Gen-related content on YouTube. So – early in the new year I’ll put something up (not sure what yet !) to “continue the ball rolling” – I can’t say I started the ball rolling, since QAT already did that !

In the meantime, here’s an interesting video that might be of interest on the CAInc Channel on Automation, Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

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CA World 2010

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:20:04 +0000

I signed up for the CA World 2010 newsletter a while ago, so I could keep abreast of the goings-on, and get genned up on the event.

I had the first email newsletter today – I’m not going to expose the content, but suffice to say it is good, solid information.

I’d urge you all to sign up for the newletter, at www.caworld.com , also, follow CAWorld2010 on Twitter here:

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Countdown to launch

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:40:34 +0000

As we read this, the new version of CA Gen (r8) is in Beta Testing with some customers. This is the start of the countdown to the launch of the product in 2010.

2010 will be a great year for CA Gen users :

r8 is released
CA World 2010
upgrades to all the eco-system tooling…..

Let’s look forward to it !

One to watch !

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:48:41 +0000

Not that I am of the opinion that CA Gen applications are reaching the “end of the line” – far from it – but realism hits home sometimes and the fact is that there are some organisations that can’t find skilled Gen resource to staff up their projects.

Check out Delta Corporate Service’s Application Support Services offering here – one to watch !

Follow them on Twitter too.

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Explanation of last week’s events

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:18:45 +0000

For those of you who are wondering what happened last week (i.e. the site dispayed a “Site Down” message) – see these Tweets here and here for the timeline.

The site was taken over, and the front page redirected to an undesirable page.

I have researched what happened, and under no circumstances were anyone’s registration details exposed.

The site returned to semi-operation during the middle of last week, and the damage removed – all of which consumed valuable time – time which should have been spent posting and promoting CA Gen.

All of the features of the gentalk.biz are now working again, except for the main menu bar at the top of the site. I’d never been entirely happy with that, so it will not reappear in its previous form – I’m looking at a replacement for it – which may take a few weeks to complete.

Thanks for your patience – complete service will be resumed within Gentalk.biz soon !!

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Last Chance to be part of the Gen r8 Beta Programme

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:26:46 +0000

The CA Gen beta test programme closes for registration tomorrow – if you want to get involved – go here and register.

Its a great opportunity to enhance and be part of the future of Gen !

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Legacy Modernisation

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:27:00 +0000

There is an appetite for Legacy Modernisation lately – its become apparent that organisations are increasingly looking toward reusing their assets in new ways and porting their existing technologies toward more productive tools, without having to throw away the last “n” years of effort and investment.

There are a number of tools and services out there that allow businesses to migrate away from so-called Legacy platforms on to “newer” or “hot” platforms like Java etc etc, but why would anyone do that from Gen ?

It seems to me that one would consider platforms to migrate TO that were more cost-effective that the current platform that the business were on, otherwise why would a modernisations be required in the first place (such as CA Gen) ?

Checkout APG’s ProgGen for examples of organisations that are using modernisation techniques.

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Gentalk supporting UK’s Children In Need appeal

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:53:54 +0000

The annual BBC Children in Need Appeal is this Friday – please donate some cash to help Children in Need – its a really worthwhile cause – read more about it here

CA World 2010 Registration is now open!

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:34:35 +0000

CA World is at the fabulous Mandalay Bay Hotel next year:

Get the event brochure here – there will be lots of sessions revelant to CA Gen at CA World 2010 – after all, attending CA World 2007 is what motivated me to start Gentalk.biz – what will you be motivated to do after CA World 2010 ?

Key Dates

November 16, 2009: Registration opens (today)

December 30, 2009: Charity donation ends

March 16, 2010: Early Bird discount ends

May 16 – 20, 2010: Mandalay Bay Resort &Casino in Las Vegas,Nevada, U.S.A.

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EDGE APAC “in full swing”

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:52:28 +0000

…. so says the official CA_Gen Tweet ! (check it out here http://www.twitter.com/ca_gen and the EDGE APAC 2009 Twitter account http://www.twitter.com/edgeapac2009 ). The the keynote on SOA by Sanjiva Weerawarana has just concluded.

It’ll certainly be a great learning occasion for those in attendance. What can I say – the EDGE Conferences are a valuable source of networking, skills exchange for the CA Gen professional. If you’ve not been fortunate enough to get to EMEA, ucate or APAC this time around – keep an eye out for the next EDGE events, webcasts and other resources at http://www.edgeusergroup.org

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Unbelievable – 50,000!

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:10:48 +0000

I rarely do “self publicity” posts here – 99.9% of the content is Gen-related, or of interest to the Gen community, but I did promise here that I would post when Gentalk.biz hit 50,000 hits.

So here we are – 2 years, 6 months and 6 days since this post (the first one) we stand at 50k hits.

Thanks to every one who has read, commented, or contributed in some way.

Rest assured the next post will be at 100k !

SOMOMOSODE – what’s that ?

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:16:19 +0000

SOMOMOSODE, or “Software Modernization and Modelbased Software Development” is a new interest group that’s been set up on the Xing social networking platform. It’s being spearheaded by Mustafa Arikan of APG, who produce the excellent ProgGen software translation tool. Its a forum for people to discuss and network with a common interest – Model Based Software Development.

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Poll: Gen-related YouTube content

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:38:30 +0000

Since QAT put a demo of their Publisher 2010 on YouTube, it occurred to me that people may wish to see other demos (and, come to that, other Gen-related content) on YouTube – so – a poll is in order !!!

If you’d like to share this poll (or host it on your site), use this html:

Say what you think!

EDGE Asia Pacific Conference Registration now Open

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:16:11 +0000

The conference is being held at the Hyatt Hotel, Canberra on November 12 & 13th 2009. The theme of this year’s conference is “Service Enabling Enterprise Application Systems”, with the focus on how to use your existing CA Gen investment to deliver this capability.

The conference provides two days of information, training and networking with others involved in SOA, Web Services, and CA Gen development. This will be the first opportunity to get into Technical Lab sessions and see, touch, and use CA Gen R8 in hands-on sessions.

EDGEucate2009 in full swing !

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:59:19 +0000

Catch the happenings at EDGEucate 2009 in Plano, Texas, USA by following @edgeucate2009, @Edgeusergroup and @ca_gen on Twitter – its alive with the buzz !!!

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New News from QAT

Gentalk Gaffer — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:03:58 +0000

QAT have just taken the really cool step of posting a demonstration of the QAT Publisher on Youtube!

The video is here:
This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

You can read about the product (QAT Publisher) at their blog entry here.

QAT Publisher is a product that allows almost seamless integration between a CA Gen application. and things like PDF files. For most Gen users, integration between third party products, its usually a set of custom-built EABs that are required, meaning nasty API programming, and maintenance of out-of-model artefacts.

QAT publisher means that there are NO EABs – a godsend for us all – definately worth a checkout!

See them at EDGEucate in Plano next week !

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EDGE EMEA 2009 Picture Gallery

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:09:09 +0000

[Pictures]

[[Slideshow]]

Not just pictures of the Conference, but the glorious Amsterdam surroundings too !

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CA Application Development Newsletter from CA

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:47:17 +0000

CA Tech Insider is the new Application Development newsletter from CA. If you’ve either not subscribed before, or previously had an e-News subscription, you need to subscribe again here.

It’s not a specific CA Gen newsletter, but covers many aspects of CA’s application development tools, CA Gen being one of the more talked-about in this first issue.

I’m not going to talk about what’s in this issue, but suffice to say, Gentalk.biz gets a mention (thanks CA !).

Just subscribe and find out for yourself.

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Badges now available – do YOU “Luv Gen” ?

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:15:40 +0000

The badges that I handed out at the EDGE EMEA 2009 Conference in Amsterdam recently (when the pictures are up on line this week – check out people actually wearing them !!) can be purchased online by clicking the badge below:

Day 2 – EDGE EMEA 2009

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:09:56 +0000

Its been a really satisfying conference this year in Amsterdam – over 41 sessions to attend, a night out in Amsterdam, really good entertainment, and comradeship.

For those who didnt go, several people have been tweeting and posting pictures to the EDGEUSERGROUP Flickr feed – hopefully more people willbe posting soon…..

Onward and upward to EDGEucate 2009 in 2 weeks time !!

I’ll be posting an evaluation of the conference here soon !

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Day 1 is over !

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:40:25 +0000

Day 1 of EDGE EMEA 2009 is over. There have been many great sessions today, with much information passed from those who presented to those in attendance. Its great to see a wide variety of presentations on many different subjects. Top of the list must be the positive customer experiences that have been presented, since EDGE is about users and their experiences and sharing of knowledge.

There have been some pictures posted at the Gentalk.biz Flickr Feed (here) and some Tweets from attendees.

Many thanks must go to Eric for taking us around Amsterdam on a guided tour to see the history and culture of this city, leading up to the “special Dutch-style event” – trust me – you HAD to be there !!!!!

Day 2 looks as good as day 1 – much learning and soaking-up of information to be done tomorrow !

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Day 1 almost complete!

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:01:16 +0000

There have been some great sessions today at EDGEEMEA2009 – particularly the one on ASYNC calls from within CA Gen – it seems that there is little take-up of what is a very powerful tool. If you don’t use it, you might consider it – it will potentially give some performance gains in a client/server application.

Many vendors were at the Conference – IET, Response Systems, CanAm, APG, CoolProfs, demoing the latest versions of their tools…

On a different note – Jumar today announced another strategic partnership with EVERWARE-CBDI – see this posting for more details.

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EDGE EMEA 2009 Reception

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:02:31 +0000

Just returned to my hotel room after the EDGE EMEA 2009 Inaugural reception. I noticed that a couple of people were Twittering here and here.

Its been a great evening to meet up with old friends and talk about CA Gen with CA people, vendors and other customers from around EMEA.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow when I can start attending sessions and learning more about the future of CA GEN.

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EDGE EMEA 2009

Gentalk Gaffer — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 07:02:11 +0000

It’s almost here – tomorrow I fly out to Holland for EDGE EMEA 2009. It’s not too late to sign up.

For those that can’t get there, especially those who want to see the fantastic venue of the Beurs van Berlage, there’s a virtual replica in Second Life, here, floating above the GenVillage.

[Pictures]

[[Slideshow]]

There’s also a Flickr feed here.

Dont forget you can see the latest tweets from the conference (either by following me, or edgeemea2009).

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Free badges

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:22:48 +0000

I’ll be at EDGE EMEA 2009 in Amsterdam next week.

I have 3 of these badges to give away to the first 3 people to come up to me and say “I Love Gen – I saw it on Gentalk.biz”……

See you there !

Application Modernisation

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:57:15 +0000

Assessing the eco-system over the last few months, there is an increasing trend for partners to produce “modernisation” solutions.

Both Jumar Solutions and QAT have “modernisation” solutions for CA Gen applications – Jumar Solutions have Project Phoenix, while QAT have Genesis.

This posting is NOT a head-to-head of both offerings, but more a comment on the fact that there is a need in the industry to reuse systems in different ways, whilst keeping the same underlying codebase, albeit refactoring and reshaping where necessary to meet today’s demands.

Some of those demands can be met already by Gen’s inherant multi-platform support, but in general, modernisation applies to applications designed either some years previously (pre-web, pre-components, pre-client/server etc) or even more recently, but without any thought for multi-channel usage.

Modernisation takes the applications and makes changes to the underlying CA-Gen model to produce the same application, which is now ready to be deployed into new styles of environment, such as an SOA, or web-based.

Of course, modernisation doesn’t need to give applications different channels, it could be simply about rearchitecting applications to reduce support and maintenance costs.

Modernisation takes different forms depending on the requirements of the individuals, but the two toolkits mentioned in this article are capable of both (and more).

So – there is help out there for those who realise that manual modernisation of large-scale applications isnt something you’d probably want to take on board without outside assistance !

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F1 Gen Network Dinner Pictures

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:46:04 +0000

As promised, here’s the gallery of pictures from last night’s Gen Network Dinner….

[Pictures]

[[Slideshow]]

Gen Network Dinner – F1 Style

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:33:19 +0000

Just got back from a fantastic Gen Network Dinner at the RBS Williams F1 Conference Centre near Oxford, UK.

We had a great tour around the Williams F1 Museum, looking at the development of the Williams cars from 1977 to 2009, including some famous cars driven by the likes of Keke Rosberg and Nigel Mansell.

Over dinner we discussed the issues associated with the CA Gen upgrades (specifically 7.6) and pooled our thoughts on Gen in the SOA space.

Its great to catch up on old friends and discuss issues and problems relevant to all of us in the CA Gen space in the UK, and collaborating and sharing knowledge is what makes these events really worthwhile. I always come away with snippets of knowledge that really can’t be gained elsewhere.

I Tweeted at the event, so did @JUMARSOLUTIONS. More photos when I can upload them tomorrow !

Thanks for a great event, Jumar!

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QAT Genesis Announced.

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:27:17 +0000

As tweeted here, there’s a new service offering from QAT – “QAT Genesis” – a modernisation offering promising to help towards modernising CA Gen applications. For more information, go here.

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Formula 1 Gen Network Dinner

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:27:04 +0000

Tonight is the Gen Network Dinner run by Jumar Solutions. It’s an event held at a venue in the UK every six month or so, for people in the UK CA Gen community to socialise and chat around CA Gen issues.

Tonight, it’s in the RBS Williams F1 Conference Centre in Grove, Oxford.

I’ll be sending some tweets from the event…. it should be a great event, if the last ones are anything to go by (Network Dinner @ Wembley and Gen Network Dinner).

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Jumar announcement!

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:45:11 +0000

Jumar have announced their latest partnership (we knew it was coming ! ). They announced it a couple of hours ago here.

Effectively they have extended their reach into the Middle East marked by signing a partnership with eSolutions Road.

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New German-speaking Gen user group

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:29:45 +0000

The new German-speaking CA Gen user group is online at http://causergroups.ca.com/usergroups/Welcome.aspx?ID=500 - go check it out and support the new user community for the D-A-CH area of Europe.

Best of luck to them!

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Follow EDGE AsiaPacific on Twitter:

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:16:27 +0000

http://twitter.com/edgeapac2009 is the Twitter ID for the EDGE Aisa Pacific Conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra, Australia - 13th November 2009.

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More breaking news from Jumar…

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:21:32 +0000

Jumar Solutions has just tweeted this :

“Keep an eye out for our exciting partnership announcements over the next few weeks…“

Jumar have a history of exciting alliances on a global basis – “Breaking News: Vendor Services Agreement” and “Europe + Australia = ?”

I’m not sure yet what this announcement means, but it will be a positive move for the Gen community.

We’ll watch and wait – to make sure you get the inside line on this, follow them on Twitter for an instant update – “http://twitter.com/JumarSolutions“

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EDGE Buzz is rising !

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:48:07 +0000

As tweeted here by QAT, they’re preparing a lab for EDGEucate 2009 about modernisation – bringing new ideas to the fore. It’ll be interesting to see how these ideas compare with other modernisation ideas around Gen !

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EDGE EMEA Conference link on CA’s site

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:17:39 +0000

CA have added a link under the “events” section of www.ca.com/gen for the upcoming EDGE EMEA 2009 Conference in Amsterdam – you can find it here.

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EDGE Asia Pacific Conference 2009

Gentalk Gaffer — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:44:57 +0000

EDGE-APAC are seeking presentation paper abstracts from those Project managers, Architects, Developers and Vendors within the community who would like to present at the conference on Friday 13th November 2009.

Download the Call for Papers PDF here.

This conference is the Southern Hemisphere’s only EDGE Conference and is being held in Canberra, Australia on Friday 13th November 2009.

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CA Gen on Twitter

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:14:48 +0000

Hot news – CA Gen now has a presence on Twitter !

You can follow the updates that the CA guys are making by signing up to Twitter and following “CA_Gen” – or if you’re already a Twitter user, you can use http://www.twitter.com/CA_Gen.

Don’t forget you can also follow the EDGE guys at http://www.twitter.com/EDGEUSERGROUP and http://www.twitter.com/edgeemea2009 and http://www.twitter.com/edgeucate2009 for the respective conferences.

Its an easy way of getting fast access to CA Gen news and views from CA !!!!

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Newsflash!!!

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:53:50 +0000

Webdaptive 2009 is released today – QAT’s update of their product – check it out at QAT’s Gen site…..

Update: See the blog post here and the press release here.

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At last the Eclipse !

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:39:08 +0000

I mistakenly overlooked possibly the most awaited event of the EDGE EMEA 2009 conference in my last post, and it was pointed out !!!

The fact is that the first official look at the r8 Eclipse-based toolset in Europe will be at EDGE EMEA 2009 in Amsterdam.

I’ve been talking about the move to Eclipse for a while (“Gen is Eclipse’d!“, “Total Eclipse of Gen – Possibly ?“, and “Eclipse Roadmap“). I even mocked-up what I thought Gen in an Eclipse environment would look like (this was on 5th September 2007 – almost 2 years ago !)

I think that this is genuinely a new look for the toolset and hopefully will draw developers to the tool who will find themselves at home in the familiar Eclipse surroundings. This’ll reduce the learning curve and increase developer productivity even more.

Maybe we need to revise those productivity statistics ?????

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EDGE EMEA 2009 Sponsor profiles and Session Grid now available

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:03:51 +0000

As tweeted here, the sponsor profiles are now online, as well as the session grid.

I’m particularly looking forward to Larry Schmidt’s session on building a business case for CA Gen, as well as the session by Christian Kersters, dealing with encyclopedia API.

There’s a great mix of sessions by customers and CA representatives themselves. Not wishing to forget the evening events and socialising and catching up with old friends that the EDGE conferences bring.

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Support CA Gen!

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:43:26 +0000

I’ve been thinking about ways to actually SHOW support for CA Gen, both on the internet and in the real world lately :

If you have a Twitter account, you could get a Twibbon – a small overlay on your Twitter avatar

You could purchase an “I Luv Gen” button badge to wear, just like the one on Gentalk.biz logo !

Spread the word !

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CA Gen in the Clouds…

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:15:26 +0000

…is a session being held at EDGEucate 2009 in Plano, Texas, USA between 28th and 30th October. Even though I can’t be there in person, it will be fascinating to understand what CA Gen can do here.

In the post “Cloud Computing” I wondered if, and indeed, how, CA Gen could be used to deploy into a cloud infrastructure, since CA Gen’s major benefit is “Write Once, Deploy Many”, this could be “Write Once, Deploy Many (oh- and into a cloud as well)” - this may well give me the answer.

Leveraging all of what’s been written in CA Gen over the years into a cloud would seal it as “probably the best development tool in the world”. I’m not sure what other development tools could take one piece of code and use it one a mainframe batch environment, through client/server, through Java, through to a cloud deployment.

My supposition is that it could be deployed into a cloud using an extention of the component-based-development features that it already has, simply wrapping up the component in a custom framework – we shall wait and see.

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Launch of Abend IT

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:07:18 +0000

Abend IT has launched!

What is Abend IT ? – A Dutch Service provider based in Utrecht, specialising in CA Gen (but other technologies too).

Who is Abend IT ? – Willem Slob and Martijn van den Burg

How to contact them ? http://www.abendit.com

They’ve got a really good “spin” for their site – some simulated Gen code spelling out their name, address and contact details – wish I’d thought of that !!

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Interactive gentalk.biz

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:43:49 +0000

I’ve collected together some bits of gentalk.biz which are associated with so-called “social media” or “interactive media” and put them together on this new “Interactive Media Page“. There’s a new URL for it : http://interactive.gentalk.biz

There, you can easily follow gentalk on Twitter, join Second Life, and get easy RSS feeds of both the blog and the forum, and more…..

More will be added soon, just to make it easy for you to get the gentalk.biz information quickly and easily.

If anyone would like a specific feed, drop me a comment and with any luck it will be done for you.

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APG gets the seal of approval from CA

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:06:13 +0000

ARIKAN Productivity Group (APG) is the latest official partner of CA – their ModelCVS technology has been stamped as CA Smart.

APG specializes in CA Gen. Their technologies contribute to the success of CA Gen in software modernization,state-of-the-art tool integration with Eclipse Modeling Framework and additional generations like UML2 diagrams.
Read the full testemonial here at CA’s partners site.

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Coud Computing

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:31:54 +0000

With the announcement here and here that CA are supporting Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), one wonders how easy (if at all) it would be to deploy a CA Gen application into such an infrastructure.

I’ll do some reading and find out, since the whole concept of cloud computing is of interest.

It’s good to see that such infrastructures are being supported by large vendors, and CA in particular.

Will CA support Microsoft’s Azure platform, I wonder ???

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EDGE EMEA 2009 and EDGEucate2009 Registration now open!

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:31:42 +0000

Hurry as there are discounts for early registration !

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SPOTLIET on GuardIEN, while Jumar reaches for the SUMMIT

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:12:51 +0000

The latest edition of the IET newsletter “SpotlIET” is avaiable for download, as is the new edition of the Jumar Solutions SUMMIT newsletter.

IET focus on the release of GuardIEn 7.8 – specifically, the Release/Environment Preparaton wizard, together with more exciting new features contained within, while Jumar look at the new Worldwide Vendor Services Agreement with CA, and how it will positively affect CA’s ability to service customers around the world at the drop of a hat with Jumar’s extensive knowledge and resources.

These are exciting times within the Gen community, since both companies will be participating in the EDGE conferences, AND the Gen r8 Beta programme.

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PATH variable in Gen

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:44:26 +0000

I recently tweeted about the DOS PATH variable in Gen – it seems (at least from the Gen workstation API standpoint) that a PATH with Windows long-style filenames in it causes the API call to open a local model to fail.

What I have found is this:

If the Gen runtime is installed in

C:\ALLFusion-Gen\Gen\Runtime

and you set up the PATH variable to be:

PATH=C:\ALLFusion-Gen\Gen\Runtime;%PATH%

then all is fine.

If, however you set the path to be

PATH=C:\ALLFUS~1\GEN\RUNTIME;%PATH%

then the open model API call fails – has anyone else found this or is there something flawed in my investigations ?

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Breaking News: Vendor Services Agreement

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:50:33 +0000

Jumar Solutions is the first Global Vendor Services partner to sign with CA - extending the reach of CA using partners globally – read the press release here.

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Gen r8 opens for beta

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:11:29 +0000

Gen R8 is open for public beta testing – for more information as to how you can participate in the program – go here.

Make it what we need it to be !

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Gen gathers momentum with Mainframe 2.0

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:06:02 +0000

As we’ve heard from CA previously, and noted here, the Mainframe 2.0 initiative has been launched successfully and is gathering momentum and press coverage (ComputerWorldUK and z/Journal).

Mainframe 2.0’s Mainframe Software Manager is written in CA-Gen – which shows the committment that CA have to Gen and its future – basing their future strategy of their own products, created by their own products !

More Mainframe 2.0 means more Gen out there (albeit under the covers) – but Gen’s been under the covers, beavering away in mission-critical systems for years – no difference there !

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Ease of use

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:33:51 +0000

A colleague has just mentioned how easy it is to perform impact assessments using the Gen as compared to other languages and environments.

He was, admittedly, using GuardIEn to perform some “where used” type reports – but remarked that he had used other development tools in the past (VB, COBOL etc) and struggled to get the level of productivity when assessing small changes in those environments that he got from Gen!

This is because the code is stored in models which can be searched – what other technology does that !

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API work

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:10:14 +0000

I’ve been tweeting over the last few days about the Encyclopedia API and how I’ve tried to start to work with it.

I have to say it is a comprehensive API, the best bit being that you can use pretty much the same calls on a CSE as a HE as a set of .dat files – so you can test your code on a local model (in effect, a throwaway) without damaging the core code in the CSE or HE.

But with complexity comes difficulty and danger – its possibly to completely corrupt your model when using the API – so I’m going to take care – however I’m not going to be using the update API – just the read-only API – so I should be safe….. shouldn’t I ????

Register for EDGE 2009 events now

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:24:58 +0000

Register now for EDGE EMEA 2009, taking place October 11-13 in Amsterdam . The first 30 attendees to register will benefit from a discounted rate of just €745 – a saving of 15%!

Network with other Gen users and view the latest products and services in the EDGE EMEA Trade Fair. The highlight of the event will be the education that was developed to address the most important issues you face, such as:

Building the Business Case for CA Gen
SOA Support inside of r8
Migration
Compliance

There will also be a series of technical labs from our vendor partners, giving you hands-on experience with products. There may also be a CA Gen R8.0 lab! Stayed tuned for schedule updates and additions at www.edgeusergroup.org.

Join your peers October 28-30, in Plano, TX, USA, at EDGEucate 2009. The $750 registration fee will include access to three days of educational sessions designed for Gen users, networking events and a vendor trade fair. Plus, the first 30 registrants will receive one free room night at our contracted hotel! Download the faxable registration form or register online.

Here’s a look at some of the sessions that will take place at EDGEucate 2009:

CA Gen Web View : Dive into the details of the features offered by Web View including its heavy usage of technologies such as Ajax .
Building the Business Case for CA Gen: Get a summary of the value propositions for leveraging CA Gen as a development environment.
CA Gen in the Clouds : Take a look at how CA Gen can be leveraged to support Cloud Computing.
SOA Support inside of r8 : Learn about three new offerings from CA Gen r8 that help you create and consume Web Services.
Responding To Hard Times – Leveraging CBD/SOA Using CA Gen : Learn how to apply Legacy Modernization techniques of Component Based Development (CBD) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to maximize reuse of current CA Gen application assets.
CA Gen 7.6 – How To Make It A Smooth Upgrade: Hear a customer success story based on their experiences of upgrading to CA Gen 7.6 and deploying 6,000+ components to production.

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AKRA’s new Future Technologies Site

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:36:51 +0000

AKRA has been around a while in the Gen space – you might have seen some of their presentations at previous EDGE conferences. They’ve launched a new site from a side of their business called “AKRA Future Technologies”.

Here’s a Google Translation link to get it into English – it’s got lots of information about the background of AKRA FT, and the technologies to watch for going forward.

One to watch !

Pages from the Danish CA-Gen User Group

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:19:54 +0000

HERE you can find the Danish CA-Gen User Group on the Web. They are very active and have an annual conference, and you can find the last 10 years (yes – 10!!) presentations and information ready for download. The information is largely in Danish, but there are translation tools on the web (http://translate.google.com for example).

There’s some really useful information here – go check it out !

CA World 2010 Announced

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 06:32:18 +0000

CA World 2010 is announced and will be from May 16th to May 20th 2010. It’ll be back at Las Vegas in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Check out the official CA World 2010 Website to find out more.

Events Calendar

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:38:54 +0000

There’s a new feature that the Gen community globally can use – I’ve established a calendar feature which can be viewed here at http://calendar.gentalk.biz.

This calendar will contain events happening in the Gen community around the world. The next 5 events are displayed on the sidebar in the Gentalk.biz website. The idea is that you can add events to the calendar which will then be viewed by everyone in the community. If you’d like to have the facility to add your events to the calendar, drop me an email on info@gentalk.biz.

Anyone is encouraged to add events to the calendar – from product demos, webcasts, user group meetings and so on.

New CA Gen URL at ca.com

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:19:30 +0000

As referenced in this tweet, there’s a new URL for CA Gen at www.ca.com – to enable us to easier find the tool, www.ca.com/gen is the new url, being used in addition to the existing (still working) url of http://www.ca.com/us/products/product.aspx?id=256.

This is a great result!

I’ll praise integration

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:32:46 +0000

Hopefully I’ll have got my twitter integration sorted out by now so I’d better test it!. This post should get tweeted -so I’d better say something about integration.
Happily, a recent entry in the IET Gen Development Blog about integration (of a different kind) caught my eye.

Whilst its true that Gen is great for back end development (batch and server components) it’s (allegedly) not good at GUI development.

I disagree, and therefore agree with IET’s viewpoint – Gen can “do” servicable front and back end development – especially with products like IETeGUI out there.

But isn’t it about choice ? I SHOULD (and CAN) do all my GUI developement within Gen and the eco-system partners’ products, but it I want to “do” the UI in another product then I should be able to. It IS all about choice, but not the simple choice of “ease of use” – it comes down to many other factors – such as the level of code reuse between the UI and back end components; what the application is for – is it purely a service application with limited GUI; or does it need a rich AJAX-based interface ?

Factors like these will guide you to whether you need pure Gen; Gen + a product like IETeGUI (or OCX controls); or a third-party tool.

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Join the new German-speaking CA-Gen user group

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:18:52 +0000

There’s to be a new German-speaking CA-Gen user group formed to serve the needs of those users in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. If you’re interested in joining, send an email to Klaus.Seeger(at)ruv.de

Hopefully, this user group will grow from strength to strength !

… unfortunately I cannot be there today … !

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:59:18 +0000

Here’s the video from the UK & Ireland CA Gen Users Day at Ditton Manor !
Anyone we know ?

You can download a Windows Media file (.WMV) here:

UK & Ireland CA Gen Users Day Review

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:32:16 +0000

CA’s Hurriyet Giray’s presentation kicked off the day – she explained the vision that CA have for Gen, and its place in CA’s strategy, and the commitment that they have placed in the product due to its inclusion as the very bedrock of Mainframe 2.0. Not just concentrating the extended value of Gen, she illustrated some of the new features and the enhancements made in the toolset to prepare for larger, more dynamic changes in the future, such as CICS web services. She also provided feedback from the Partner Advisory Summits recently held in London and Plano – real interaction between the customers and CA is shaping the content of future CA Gen releases.

Jumar’s Dan Hobbs’ presentation was a light-hearted look at one of the more serious aspects of model-based-development – what happens when your model gets corrupted? He explained what model corruptions are, in the context of a simple example, and then proceeded to illustrate the concepts, and the answers to the problems with some concrete examples. Much of the corruptions that happen are benign, and Jumar has experience of what these are, however, some can cause untold damage, but Jumar has tools to identify and fix these issues.

John Gymer from IET spoke of many approaches to parallel development, model management and the best approaches to take depending on your requirements. His presentation provided food for thought in that many of the existing Gen sites have a model management structure which hasn’t been re-evaluated for a long time, since “it just works”. John’s words will prompt many people to consider just how many models they need and what environments they are to support, and vice versa.

John also launched IET 7.8 – the new updates to their tooling.

Virtualisation is a relatively new technology to the marketplace – Response Systems have seized the initiative and assessed what use it can be within the Gen environment. They have used it to evaluate new versions of Gen by creating images of PC’s with the Gen toolset installed and deployed them on target PC’s. Since images do not interact with the host PC, and therefore do not damage or change it, it can be destroyed after use.

They have also experienced the downside of virtualisation – the fact that memory is now the critical factor, as well as network bandwidth. They have realised that careful planning can enable virtualisation to assist greatly in their work.

Orjan from CSN’s presentation was an enlightened look at how they went about understanding CA’s commitment to Gen. They visited the labs and spoke to the developers, understood the impact Mainframe 2.0 has had on the r8 release of Gen, and come to the conclusion that CA’s vision for Gen is slowly evolving toward one which they are comfortable with, and therefore, have decided to invest in Gen for the medium-to-long term.

CA’s Dalia Soliman provided a LIVE audio and video demonstration from CA’s labs in Plano of how easy it will be in r8, to take a web service generated by Gen, now with no requirement for proxies! and consume it within a Dreamweaver HTML page.

The demo went well, showing how a service defined by a piece of XML can be generated from Gen and called from a page designed outside the toolset. At the moment, the interaction (at the design time) is handled by a Dreamweaver plugin, and (presumably) more will be available later for other web application design tools.

Lastly, Paul Hughes from Jumar focused on the planning, planning, planning and more planning that you need to undertake in any transformation and modernisation project! To enable you to understand how to get where you want to be – be it CBD, 3270 to GUI, or GUI to WUI, there needs to be a lot of planning, starting with understanding where you are now. Paul likened it to a SATNAV-type journey, where the first thing the SATNAV system does before giving you directions to where you want to go, is work out where it is! – after all, to get directions to a place, you need to know where you’re starting from…

For a downloadable PDF, with extra photographs, click here - just wait for the video !

IET launch 7.8

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:39:59 +0000

We had the luxury at the UK & Ireland User Day at Ditton Manor, of having John Gymer from IET speak about the new features of IET’s 7.8 release. You can read the note here. Dont forget, a full report on the day will be posted here soon…..

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Some great events this week

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:41:49 +0000

This week sees the UK & Ireland CA Gen Users Group Dayat Ditton Manor, London. There are a range of speakers from vendors to customers speaking about how to deal with Encyclopedia corruptions to virtualisation though to modernising user interfaces – this is happing on Wednesday June 18th.

ALSO happening on Wednesday 18th June is the COOLProfs Customer Day in Rotterdam, Holland – there will be speakers on migration to Gen 7.6 though to agile development.

BOTH days are worth attending if you are in the relevant countries !

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Seminar series available online

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:24:08 +0000

Just in case you’d missed it, the recent Jumar Solutions series of Webcasts are available here for viewing – covering everything from model analysis to modernising interfaces.

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In-memory databases and Gen

Gentalk Gaffer — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:05:20 +0000

I have heard that it is possible for a CA-Gen application to be used against a mySQL database. Since MySQL supports the concept of an in-memory database for some of its tables (depending on the storage engine that you select for a given table) to decrease response times. Could the already fast and efficiently generated code from a CA-Gen application be used against an in-memory database?

This would be an interesting concept to get to grips with – maybe someone has already tried it ?

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Gen – is it visual ?

Gentalk Gaffer — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:45:37 +0000

Several things are happening as I write this -

I’m in the garden (wireless laptop)
I’m reading the latest edition of Visual Systems Journal

..and thinking – “Is Gen visual ?”

VSJ is a journal about programming and it centres around enterprise-scale systems delivered in so-called “visual languages” ranging from Sliverlight through to VisualPython and MS-Office programming.

It strikes me that Gen satisifies the criteria to be included in the discussions in the magazine – it is visual in that modelling takes place in a visual manner (diagramming tools etc), can be used to build enterprise-class systems, and is able to generate reusable components in technologies that can be used in SOAs etc

So – should Gen be included in the discussions in the magazine? I think so – maybe I’ll contact them and write an article for them – what do you think ?

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Get Involved in the Gen Community !

Gentalk Gaffer — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:17:26 +0000

I notice that there are a number of user events coming up in EMEA – we should support these by either attending, or presenting – after all – these groups are USER group for users to exchange knowledge.

For example : get involved with EDGE EMEA 2009 here, CoolProfs customer day here, and the UK & Ireland User Group here.

I’ve been at a few of these and found great knowledge is transferred between users to the benefit of all !

See you at some of them !!!

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UK & Ireland CA-Gen User Group Day

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 15 May 2009 10:10:16 +0000

The UK Gen PLC will be holding its 2nd 1 day seminar for all UK-based CA-Gen customers at CA’s EMEA Headquarters at Ditton Park, Slough on Thursday 18th June 2009.

The seminar will be free to all attendees. The agenda (which is still being finalised) will be varied and interesting, and includes presentations from a number of CA-Gen users, all of whom have differing experiences of the product, both vendors and users.

The day will also provide opportunities for CA-Gen users to meet and make contact with other CA-Gen users in the UK, and form useful relationships, which will help both them and the product grow and develop into the future.

If you would like to present a session at the CA-Gen PLC Day– after all, it’s a USER Group – please volunteer using the info@gentalk.biz email address for a discussion.

If you wish to attend, please send an email to info@gentalk.biz.

Please let other UK-based CA-Gen users know in order that we can grow the community!

Also, there is a PDF version of this note available here for download and printing if you so wish.

Wouldn’t it be good if…

Gentalk Gaffer — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:23:52 +0000

…I could take the SaaS (Software as a Service) model and apply it to CA-Gen ?

Which bits of it would I offer as a service ?

The deployable artifacts, such as executables (so we would have a new paradigm here) – not new generators, but a new packaging option, maybe).
The encyclopedia – so the code repository could be shared amongst several organisations, each having their own “View” of it.
The toolset itself, so that nothing is ever installed on the local workstations at the organisations’ base?

All interesting possibilities !

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Gentalk is 2 Years old !

Gentalk Gaffer — Sat, 02 May 2009 07:01:16 +0000

May 4th 2009 marks Gentalk’s 2nd birthday, so I will be looking back at the two years since the site was launched and comparing what the Gen arena was like in 2007 with the Gen arena in 2009.

The first comparison is obviously how Gen has evolved since the first moves into Eclipse in Gen 7.6 (see here). With the announcements that Gen would be moving to Eclipse for its design tools, it clearly started a trend which will continue with r8.

Second for this post is the rise of other sites related to CA Gen on the internet – both QAT and IET have started blogs and have regular articles on CA Gen and other related subjects (both feeds are carried through Gentalk).

A lot has happened in the last two years – thanks for the support and readership – wonder what 2011 will be like !?

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New whitepaper from ARIKAN – code restructuring

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:23:24 +0000

APG has produced a new paper in which they discuss code restructuring as part of a reverse engineering and modernisation exercise.

Code restructuring can be done in an automated fashion only if the meaning of the code is understood, rather than a line-for-line code transformation process.

ProgGen is such a tool – it can understand the semantic meaning of the code that it parses and allow the meaning of the code to decide what restructuring can be done. The power of the code restructuring toolset is that it takes the 3GL type code – PL/1, Natural, COBOL etc and creates a metamodel out of it, which can then be used to change the paradigms and indeed the language that the transformation is directed at.

This paper can be downloaded from here.

It is really worth a look, and demonstrates the power that APG can bring to bear on your Legacy systems to modernise them and restructure them into the bargain.

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Code snippets

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:33:12 +0000

Talking to some of my colleagues yesterday – we thought – “wouldn’t it be great if we could have a feature in Gen which would be like a list of common code snippets that we could insert into a Gen action block or a procedure step to do common things ?”

Yes, I know we have action blocks which we can call, but sometimes you just need a small few lines of code that could do a small job, that we could simply “add” with a click of a button.

Not sure how this would work in practical terms, with different view types and so on, but I’ll give it some thought – any ideas from the readership would be appreciated !!!

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MayMainframeMadness – r8 !!!!!

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:29:35 +0000

As part of CA’s May Mainframe Madness, there will be a webcast on May 21st, which you can get more details of (and sign up to) here.

CA Gen will be one of twenty six separate webcasts in May related to CA’s new mainframe strategy called Mainframe 2.0. Learn how CA Gen is a key technology in the implementation of Mainframe 2.0 as well as how Mainframe 2.0 will benefit CA Gen customers. Get a firsthand look at the features in CA Gen r8, CA Gen’s evolution to Eclipse and how CA Gen continues to assist customers in making transitions to web-based architectures and SOA. CA Gen is part of CA’s Mainframe 2.0 initiative, showing a commitment to CA Gen as part of their flagship strategy to make mainframes easier to manage.

I’ll be tuning in to see and hear it and take part – and get a glimpse of CA Gen r8!

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EDGE Conferences 2009

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:30:29 +0000

EDGE wants YOU to present this October!

The official Call for Presentations for EDGE EMEA 2009 and EDGEucate 2009 is now open until Friday, May 8th.

EDGE EMEA 2009 will take place October 10-13, 2009, at Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, Netherlands
EDGEucate 2009 will take place October 28-30, 2009, at the Collin County College in Plano, Texas, USA

Share your CA Gen experiences and expertise with a captive audience who currently rely on or are considering incorporating CA Gen into their business. EDGE is looking for abstract submissions on a variety of CA Gen topics including SOA and Application Modernization. If your abstract is selected to be presented at either event, you will receive the following speaker benefits:

50% off of your registration fees to EDGE EMEA 2009 or EDGEucate 2009 or (A Value of €450/$250)
Recognition as a featured presenter in 2009 marketing campaign and Web sites
Exciting networking opportunities for you and your company

Complete this online form by Friday, May 8th, 2009. Please specify which event you would like to present at.

If you have questions about the EDGE EMEA (European event) submission process, contact Ali Wrighton at +44 1342 811678 or edge-emea@edgeusergroup.org.

If you have questions about the EDGEucate 2009 (US event) submission process, contact Carrie Johnson at 312.673.5957 or speakers@edgeusergroup.org.

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More performance considerations

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 06:06:17 +0000

Picking up on a thread from QAT’s blog here about performance considerations when moving from a CBD approach to a J2EE approach within Gen, its also worth noting that moving between platforms can cause a significant difference to performance.

Tuning the application and performance testing is a must, especially if changing the middleware (moving from, say, Client Manager to Direct TCP connections, or more radically from Tuxedo to Transaction Enabler).

Notable things to consider and be mindful of are memory requirements for the load modules, and the calculation of how much should be allocated to the application and how much to the OS, for example. Possible changes in the way the database engines work (assume you are changing database too!) will change the performance profile of the application – online and batch applications often have different performance curves.

The issues can be resolved – by performance testing and tuning early on, and before even that – considering the performance of the existing application on the existing platform and working out the differences in architecture on the new platform to see at least WHERE the effects will be felt if not what they are.

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Gen and the Cloud

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:42:58 +0000

I’ve been wondering lately if a Gen application could be deployed into a cloud.

Admittedly I haven’t looked into this a great deal as of yet, but the nearest match to currently supported Gen platforms is Microsoft’s Azure platform, based around .NET.
From a technology perspective, cloud computing appears to offer massively scalable infrastructure to organisations wishing to take advantage of being isolated from the underlying infrastructure that applications run on and allow them to focus on the development of the software which fits their needs.

Cloud computing is a serious contender for the future of computing as a commodity item, and it will be interesting to see if/when Gen and the Cloud come together.

Gentalk’s Twits

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:20:46 +0000

Gentalk now has a presence on Twitter. Twitter is a social network which allows small posts “twits” to be posted anywhere/when.

Try and follow the Gentalk postings on Twitter by searching for Gentalk from your twitter account.

At the moment, I’m investigating the Encyclopedia API – so I’m twittering my experiences over the next couple of days/weeks with it. At the end of my investigations I’ll probably collate the experiences together into a post…..

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Gen-o-sphere

Gentalk Gaffer — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:04:43 +0000

This is a short post to say how pleased I am that there are an increasing number of blogs surrounding the CA Gen product now – QAT’s recently launched blog and now IET’s CA Gen Development Blog. They are both definately useful tools and should serve to let us dip into their worlds and see their thinking !

Lets see more Gen users and companies hosting CA Gen blogs !

The Gen-o-sphere is expanding !

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IET Blogwagon !

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:56:10 +0000

IET have created a new blog which, although only a day old has a great article about memory optimisation in their own products which we could all be mindful of when developing with Gen – looking at their tips for memory optimisation, and I’ve seen a few things that I hadn’t realised which we could use in our own applications – check it IET’s Gen Development Blog – it’s REALLY worth a look…..

CA Gen and Earth Hour

Gentalk Gaffer — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:51:17 +0000

On Saturday, March 28, 2009, at 8:30 p.m.,Gentalk.biz will be taking part in Earth Hour, sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund. We’ll be joining tens of millions of concerned citizens and corporations in calling for action to save our planet for future generations.

We’re proud that Gentalk.biz is making a statement about the fight against climate change, and we as individuals can sign up to participate, too. You can learn more about Earth Hour at www.EarthHour.org, and you can sign up to participate at www.EarthHour.org/signup.

If you’d like a high level history of Earth Hour, more than 50 million people in 400 cities around the world took part in Earth Hour 2008. The lights went out at Sydney’s Opera House, Rome’s Coliseum, the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge. Even the Google homepage went dark for the day. Many major corporations took part including HP, Coca-Cola, and Morgan Stanley.

If you think about it, CA Gen already supports the planet – how ? – by allowing more work to be done by less developers, since the tool is more productive than many other development environments, thereby reducing the carbon footprint and impact to the only planet we have..

This year, Earth Hour promises to be even bigger, with more signing on daily. People in nternational cities such as Beijing, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, London, Manila, Mexico City, Moscow, Rome, and Toronto will be switching their lights out. You can view WWF’s video about Earth Hour 2009 at www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjWD8pbK5t8 to get a sense of the magnitude of this event.

Gentalk.biz is proud to support Earth Hour – I hope you’ll join us in uniting with the world to make a difference for our planet. Don’t forget—March 28^th at 8:30 pm, turn out, take action.

CA Gen and the Credit Crunch

Gentalk Gaffer — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:08:09 +0000

In these days of recession, far from the heady days of the 1980’s and 1990’s when there seemed to be money to throw at development projects, enterprises are having to be more savvy in their spending.

It strikes me that there are only two options when it comes to your IT projects:

Do them
Not do them

Option 2 is sometimes not an option, so its down to option 1!

When “doing” new IT projects it would make sense to senior managers and directors that those projects are done as efficiently as possible – enter CA Gen!

It’s a well known fact that CA Gen is more productive than many other development environments, so bizzarely, the credit crunch may be a good thing for CA Gen !

Not sure about the rest of the world though …..

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EDGE gives real opportunity to contribute

Gentalk Gaffer — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:30:32 +0000

EDGE has today launched its brand new wiki !

A wiki is a collaborative editing environment where people can add knowledge to a community. Obviously, people can retrieve that knowledge too ! Its a great opportunity to contribute your individual knowledge to the global knowledgebase about CA Gen on the Internet. EDGE is truly the “window on the world” of Gen development.

Any amount of input is valuable – but you have to be an EDGE member to contribute – another great reason for joining EDGE !

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