Latest news includes a bunch of CA Gen roadshows in many States, you can register for them here

I’m not going to wax lyrical about the content, since you should be subscribing to this newletter ! Its well worth it to find out about “happenings” in the CA Gen world.

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I haven’t been particularly “into” components and CBD, preferring the traditional approach of utilising common code, as opposed to components.

One of the things that has always put me off investigating componentisation in more detail is that there seemed to be more management of “bits of stuff” required than “traditional” development. You had to have different models, specifications and implementations etc. whereas just a common action block would do, so, in my opinion, the amount of effort required to manage those “bits of stuff” outweighed the benefits of componentisation (rightly or wrongly!).

I therefore was surprised that I took a fresh look at componentisation – at CA World a couple of weeks ago, in the context of a workshop with IET and their new GuardIEn 8.0 product – when I wasn’t expecting to.

As a long-time GuardIEn user, I was aware of the fact that in a large-scale Gen site, you can’t do without it for model and configuration management, but stretch that a little further and get it to manage your “bits of stuff” in the CBD world. So – now the amount of effort required on the configuration management side of things is reduced/eliminated then the benefits of a component-based approach become more tangible.

Perhaps someone could suggest a new name – “June Juggernaut Jollines?” – all entries gratefully received – just leave a comment.

At CA World 2010 – there was a mysterious pair of feet at the Cloud Commons area (www.cloudcommons.com)  at CA World 2010 …..

… the new CA-sponsored site for cloud computing.

This is interesting (not simply because of those feet) but since cloud-enablement is on the CA Gen futures list (more about that soon) it makes sense to get involved and learn about cloud services and cloud computing in general.

Oh and yes - they ARE my feet !!!!

So what did I discover (in summary) ?

• CA Gen has a healthy roadmap for the next couple of years
• The partners are coming up with ever more useful and productive add-ons for the toolset (QAT‘s QAT Exchange and the Agility BPM tools)
• Existing tools are being enhanced on an almost daily basis (IET‘s VerifIEr)
• Tools are being developed to bring people TO CA Gen (ProgGen by APG)
• The CA Gen market is healthy and prospering in parts of the world (as evidenced by CoolProfs‘ presentation)

But most of all, CUSTOMERS are using the tooling in innovative ways, as displayed by the numerous customer presentations that I attended at CA World. The fact that customers are ready to wax lyrical about their experiences with CA Gen speaks volumes about the passion they have for the product, but most of all that it continues to perform and is viable in today’s marketplace with so many other tools all trying to be the top of the tree.

After lunch Next came a lab by APG, demonstrating the power of their ProgGen software which can take COBOL programs, and create fully working CA Gen models out of them (yup – really !!! I’ve seen the technology before and it STILL amazes me!). It doesnt stop there, since it also works with PL/1, Adabas/Natural and other 3GL Languages.

This was followed up with a session on the CA Gen proxies and how they can be used to extend Gen’s reach and make its functionality available to other technologies – a major benefit of the CA Gen technology.

Last of the day was a session from Ryan Johnson of Response Systems – his take on the upgrade process in Gen – traditionally a process fraught with danger. Applying careful thought, it can be de-risked and made less painful (together with the latest release of CA Gen – which aims to make upgrades easier of course!).

There are some truly smart people out there in CA Gen -land !!!!!

Yesterday was the busiest day so far in terms of CA Gen sessions:

QAT’s demonstration of their Agility tooling for Business Process Automation was certainly food for thought, with 2 sessions based around their product.

There were a couple of sessions around upgrade projects and some deep technical stuff around mainframe interfacing, which all proved that people can solve ALL sorts of problems with CA Gen – even those that seem unsolvable….

IET user group – a small but perfectly formed group of people who use the GuardIEn product. Each time I attend one of these sessions, I see that the product set has expanded and/or has extra features, particularly the VerifIEr tooling which seems to grow exponentially – all to the good since it’s a great productivity booster.

Finally – back to the Maroon 5 concert – the Tweetup – in the My Oh Miami Bar – all those Tweeters finally meeting up and discussions around new media and how it can help and even grow the enterprise !

The CA Gen sessions today were many and varied – the roadmap for CA Gen looks fit and healthy as delivered by CA staff, with evidence that the toolset is evolving and moving forward into areas that it needs to – Cloud is on the roadmap, so is SaaS !

Delving down into the specifics, a presentation by CA on SOA and CA Gen with respect to the new functionality available in CA Gen r8 (just gone GA !) and how it differs (positively) from previous releases – Web Services on top of EJBs, Dreamweaver interaction and more.

Next, a demonstration by CANAM Software Labs of the XML Composer tooling which allows CA Gen to consume web services exposed by remote systems. This is a great tool since it shields the developers from any “guts” of External Action Blocks in C or COBOL or whatever – so comsuming XML from files, web services etc is now easy!

Then came the infamous EDGE reception in the LAX Nightclub in the Luxor Hotel – trust me – you HAD to be there !

Looking forward to tommorow – a completely packed day full of Gen stuff – what more could I want !