• Software Modernization Services
  • Lotus Notes to SharePoint 2010 Migration
  • Natural Adabas to JAVA/.NET Reengineering
  • VB to .Net Conversion
  • VisiCodeMiner Business DNA
  • Enterprise Reengineering
  • Cognos to Microsoft BI Migration
• Technology Services
  • Remote DBA Services
  • BizTalk/SharePoint Integrated Solutions
  • SAP Outsourcing
  • IT Outsourcing
  • Outsourcing Software Testing
  • Application Development
  • Application Maintenance
  • Business Intelligence Solutions
  • webMethods Development
  • Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007
  • Business Process Management
  • Microsoft BizTalk Server
  • IT Staffing
• Business Process Outsourcing
  • Flood Zone Determination & Certification
  • Doc Indexing, Tracking & Data Extraction
  • Title & Escrow Processing
  • Pre Post Close Review
  • Lien Release and Assignments
  • Other Mortgage Services
  • Fail-Safe Methodology
• Industry Solutions
  • Manufacturing & Retail
  • Mortgage & Banking

Natural Adabas reengineering to latest .NET/SQL application system while adding 30% new business functionality, enhanced system along with documentation, code and automated scripts

Natural Adabas Migration to .NET/SQL Case Study

A major service company has a business critical system developed in Natural Adabas 30 years ago. The client needed to rewrite the system in .NET/SQL the system while adding 30% new business functionality. The  conversion was done in approximately nine months. The client got an enhanced system along with documentation, code and automated scripts back.

Reasons for reengineering

The organization was running the same business process in different geographical regions. Isolated Lotus applications were used to serve each location and there wasn’t any central management available. In addition to this, the system was lacking the following:

• Cost – Presently the application is running on a mainframe – the only major applications residing on a legacy mainframe. This has significant hardware and software maintenance costs.
• Resources – At this time the client no longer has any of the original application developers in house, and is using contractors for the maintenance of the applications. However, the company has SQL Server DBAs in house, but is not able to utilize them because of technology platform.
• Agility – Natural and Adabas are older technologies and do not have the new features and functions that are available in today’s contemporary platform. As a result the speed by which changes can made to the existing systems is limited, which in turn limits the ability of the client in the changing market place.

The size of the application

2229    Natural Programs
1492    Natural Sub Programs
859      Maps (screens)
531      Data Access
21        Tables
225      JCL Job Streams
18        COBOL Interfacing Programs

The estimated lines of code is over 1,050,000 lines.

Tools Used for reengineering

To mitigate this risk the existing application’s code was used as a source for functional specifications. However this task is tedious and to facilitate a number of commercially available tools can be used to generate documentation to abstract and allow for “harvesting” of the business logic from the existing source code, one such tool is Natural Engineer from Software AG. These documents are intended to facilitate the capture the application functionality.

• A base functionality document is required to allow for development of test cases and test planning, and also be a measure of functional completeness.
• When re-modeling or migrating an application you always come across certain constructs or usage of the base language that require a view of the whole sub-program to be able to understand and translate it correctly in the target language.
• Automated conversions also rely on “interpretations” of language constructs when mapping one language to another. Again looking at the code or the documentation will validate these “interpretations”. Visionet uses its VisiMigrate parser to parse the code and ESF.NET platform for presentation, security and database layers. The business logic was manually altered and extended to build a N-tier modern system.

Who Did What?

For the effective and timely implementation of the reengineering project, Visionet has identified the following inputs from the client

Roles & Responsibilities

R = Prime Responsibility
S = Support Role
A = Approval Role

Task	Visionet	Client Business	Client IT
Requirement Specifications	R	S&A	S
Functional Specification	R	S&A	S
Storyboard	R	S&A	S
Technical Specifications	R	S	S&A
Test Plan	R	S&A	S
Data Migration Plan	R	S	S&A
Automated Test Scripts	R
Programming	R
Hardware Setup & Network	S		R
Installation	S		R
UAT	S	R&A	S
Parallel Testing	S	R&A	S
Data Migration	S		R
Backup & Archiving	S		R
Cutover	S	R

 

Follow Us On Twitter