Building Products
Leading Building Products Company Uses ADC M3 Process to Modernize Application
For almost two decades, a leading North American building products company has built specific business rules into its applications using CA 2E (formerly Synon). The majority of this business runs on these applications and are accessed by hundreds of users in their facilities across the United States and Canada. While these applications have served them well in the past, the need to provide them in a modern GUI continues to grow, as new employees are more familiar with a web-based interface, reducing the learning curve of their training.
Rewrite, replace—or migrate and modernize?
Rewriting the company’s applications in .Net or Java was an option. The current staff had the majority of their expertise in RPG on IBM I, with little direct experience in other languages. Unfortunately, to get the team trained and then rewrite the applications would take a significant amount of time. Also, the cost of this rewrite was conservatively estimated to approach or exceed the estimated cost of the entire original application development effort. Finally, the inherent risks involved in such an endeavor would be substantial. Any piece of the fundamental existing business logic built into these applications could be missed or simply incorrectly interpreted, rendering the new application useless. And during the long development process, new enhancements to the current application would not be possible.
Buying new applications was another option. But new applications come with new business rules. Adapting the company to those new rules or attempting to adapt the new application to the company rules is a major challenge. Also, many interfaces to external applications and machines would have to be rebuilt, adding many of the same costs and risks associated with a rewrite.
In the end, migration of the existing CA 2E logic to a development tool capable of generating multiple languages to multiple platforms seemed to be the right option. It would preserve the investment in the current applications while providing the ability to deliver them in multiple interfaces depending on the user requirements. Automated migration of the code would also reduce the time required to deliver the new applications as well as many of the risks associated with a rewrite. Further, new enhancements could start as soon as the migration was validated.
The tools
CA Plex was chosen as the new development tool because of the long-term relationship with CA and its model-based development techniques that allow standards enforcement and easy re-use of existing tested code.
Formerly known as AllFusion Plex, CA Plex provides application development in a Windows environment and then compile and test them in the target environment such as Windows/.NET, Java/J2EE or the IBM System i. CA Plex supports the development of many different types of applications including client/server, web-based, service-oriented, character-based, and batch and wireless device-based—all from a single set of skills and development techniques. This has proven to reduce development time and deliver a solid, robust application.
CA Plex is a multi-platform, model-based, architected rapid application development (ARAD) tool that includes architectural and design objects known as patterns. By eliminating the need to code repeatable elements of applications, patterns significantly accelerate time required for projects, which in turn provides a significant cost savings.
ADC Austin provided the right tools—and training to use them
In this instance, ADC Austin was retained to serve as technical advisor, providing assistance with implementation and training of CA Plex, as well as the migration of the CA 2E model to the CA Plex model.
CA Plex training of existing CA 2E developers was done on-site, and with ADC Austin’s coaching, our client was able to easily understand both the similarities and the differences with the new technology set. Pattern definition and inheritance were key, so that development standards could be established from the start.
The migration tool built and executed by ADC Austin provided a working CA Plex model for the application. All database definitions and functional specifications were migrated, compiled and tested. Within a short period of time and very little intervention, the application was performing the same functions in both web-based and client/server interfaces from the same code.
ADC Austin’s pre-modernization analysis makes the difference
In most development shops, applications are built over many years, by many different developers. So it is inevitable that obsolete or unused objects will remain with the application. This was the case here. These objects were maintained year after year as new changes were introduced to the application, adding time and cost to each enhancement. There was little to no application documentation, and the original application designer was no longer with the company. Therefore, a better understanding of the application design was needed to complete the modernization effort.
ADC’s Application Mapping and Analysis (AMA) service was used to provide a complete, interactive model of the application design, augmented with expert analysis. A staggering 30% of the application was determined to be abandoned or no longer in use. As a result, this analysis helped improve development and maintenance productivity.
