podcast

EDGE EMEA 2007 Podcast #2

Here it is – EDGE EMEA Podcast #2 – covering the second and final day of the recent EDGE EMEA Conference in London, UK.

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Final facets of EDGE EMEA 2007

… with Facet Consulting, who led us through what refactoring actually is – which is the “Process of Restructing an application from the inside-out without functionally altering the application.

Why should we refactor ?

There are a number of reasons, including:

• Old achitectures restricting new developments

• Inconsistent standards

•  Increasing cost to deliver the same level of change

OK – so why refactor not rewrite ?

There are a number of ways to alleviate the above issues:

• Replace – Moderate risk, High cost

• Rewrite – High risk, VERY High cost

• Refactor – Low – moderate risk, Moderate cost

This should answer the question!

But the only way that refactoring can be justified and monitored and determined a success is if the outcomes are defined at the start.

The next step is to define where the endpoint will be, in terms of architectures (for example, introducing CBD) and business end states (for example, creating an SOA), then what the process for travelling there will be, and start small, with an area of the business that will benefit, and can be measured.

Along the way, take the opportunity to correct bugs and inconsistencies, for example, standardise on a particular error message for a certain error, or a set of function keys which are currently different, make them the same across the application.

This last session really brought together many strands of EDGE EMEA 2007 – refactoring is possible, and encouraged within Gen, and can be used to extend the life and usefulness of existing applications.

After all of the sessions were complete, Eric ten Harkel from CoolProfs brought all the delegates together and wrapped up the conference with an entertaining video montage of us all set to music, and thanked all the attendees, especially the EDGE board, the staff at Ditton Manor, and last of all the sponsors, IET, Canam, Response Systems, CoolProfs, Jumar Solutions and CA, without whom it would not have been possible.

to the Web with Gen – EDGE EMEA 2007

Kale Consultants  presented a case study of a recent migration (seems to be a recurring theme!) – this time, a migration to the web using Gen 7.0.

The system in question is CBD-based , with some 30 models comprising approximately 37 million objects.

The target was to get “to the web”, and various approaches were considered, including rewrites, but as so often occurs in Gen environments, a total Gen solution was chosen, deploying to EJBs.

Technology and paradigm changes mean that Gen interfaces need to change – such as:

• Security issues
• Non-supported events
• C EABs to JAVA EABs
• Replacement of Active/X and OLE controls

Many issues in changing technology bring other, less obvious challenges, as are mentioned in other posts, for example database behaviour changes and functionality being different in different releases of the product and platform.
 

Of particular interest in this presentaton was a discussion of deployent platforms and issues with those platforms. On one application server, such as Weblogic, there will be one set of performance and deployment issues, and on other platforms, such as WebSphere, there will be others,but the choice of deployment platform can change the course, and ultimately the success or failure of a project. Kale Consulting showed that by proper and effective performance testing and deployment tuning, the project can be implemented with a deployment mechanism which will be effective.

Consideration has to be given to the target infrastructure and architecture BEFORE selection of the re-engineering mechansim ?

Yes ? No ? – neither !

They should be done in tandem and be prepared to change half way through when the first choice seems not to be correct.
 

Migrations ‘r’ Us at EDGE EMEA 2007!

Migrations seem to be he order of the day recently, and Thomas Ochmann of Akra Software Development spoke about a recent migration they had done for a client – from Cool:Gen 5.1 to CA Gen 7.5, the HE to a Windows CSE, the application from z/OS to Solaris, and change from batch to Online Procedure Steps Without Screens. He spoke about the development environment and how it differed from the z/OS times, and illustrated the development processes under Solaris.

The project highlights were examined, and these highlights are pointers to all those organisations that are expecting an impending upgrade – watch out for them, and learn from Akra’s experiences !

For example:

• examine EABs for z/OS-specific code
• understand that there may be model issues when moving encyclopedias and budget both time and effort to resolve them
• realise that changing database technology comes with its own dangers, such as date fields initialising to different values, and having to modify code which relies on these default values
• code that takes advantage of OS-specific features not functioning correctly, such as intentionally causing a division by zero to cause a rollback !
• changes in database behaviour and cursor-specific issues

Following on from the debate about these issuses were serious points to tackle, such as educating developers that they are in a new world – JCL has been replaced by Korn Shell scripts, C is NOT COBOL! and differences in Gen’s debugging output. These issues are often not realised until support is required and then developers and support staff have little idea what to do !

Akra’s experiences of upgrades and transitions have been positive, but not straightforward, which we would all do well to remember. Thomas’ points need to be remembered before an upgrade is commenced – not after !

CA Gen and ASP.NET at EDGE EMEA 2007

Tuesday morning commenced with a look at the positioning of Gen with respect to Microsoft’s ASP.Net technology with Dalia Soliman, from CA.

She introduced Microsoft’s .Net technology and reminded us that the .Net web clients are 100% Gen-generated, use C# for the application logic and can also communicate with COBOL, C and .Net servers. Since the business logic is in the action diagrams, it can be shared between different deployment technologies (long a strength of Gen).

Going over the enhancements in Gen 7.6 for .Net in terms of performance, better support for the dot notation, and native .Net support for MQSeries as a a transport set the scene for what might be in r8. At this stage, these are candidat enhancements and may or may not reach the final product.

Such things as AJAX, themes and skins, tabbed browsing support and particularly support for WiX, the installer engine used to create MSI deployments all point to a product which is enabling developers to craft end-to-end systems (even to the point of generating installer packages) from the same tool.

Beyond r8 are more exciting development potentials, such as modernising the toolset interface and using 3rd party tools as a framework for the toolset.

Gen is being taken forward (particularly in the web-type arena) and has at last got some functionality that puts it on a par, if not better, than the comparable Microsoft tools in the interface game. What the Microsoft tools lack is the cross-platform capability that we now take as read !