Author Archives: Vladimir Orszagh

Partnering with EasiRun Europa

FreeSoft and EasiRun enter into a strategic partnership to leverage each other’s expertise and solutions for core and strategic legacy modernization. This symbiosis benefits companies with mission-critical applications by providing comprehensive solutions for measurement and analysis as well as for reducing technical backlogs, risks, security and many other software-relevant aspects.
FreeSoft’s and EasiRun’s approaches fit together perfectly and will provide customers with significant added value by extending their offerings in terms of improved maintenance, integration, quality and security of applications.

“The partnership with EasiRun is very important to us. We are delighted to have this company at our side with its many years of migration experience, fantastic solution portfolio and excellent customer relationships. The symbiosis of expertise and state-of-the-art technology is particularly evident in the combination with our LiberatorWorkbenchTM Legacy Conversion Framework. This enables us to define continuous software measurement and analysis processes to deliver high quality software solutions” Vladimir Orszagh, CEO of FreeSoft.

Enterprises must constantly find new solutions to keep pace with the demands of digitization, DevOps, time-to-market and cloud computing in the face of increasing complexity and remain competitive.

“FreeSoft is the perfect partner for us,” said Donald Fitzgerald, CEO of EasiRun Europe. “FreeSoft’s experience and expertise will complement our existing post portfolio. This will allow us to offer an expanded range of services. Ultimately, our customers benefit because they can better manage their complex application portfolios, increase productivity, and reduce testing and programming efforts. Software modernization projects are much easier to manage and control based on objective information”.

Natural/ADABAS conversion to Java and Oracle/MSSQL

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The customer is a leading outsourcing company in South Africa with a strategic initiative to migrate its ADABAS/Natural packages to Java technology stack and RDBMS platform. This Revenue Management package is installed at dozens of Local Authorities and District Municipalities, including the Private Sector.

The Project

The target of the project was the automated conversion of the entire ERP package from Natural/ADABAS platform to Java with agnostic Relational Database Management System (MSSQL and Oracle) by utilizing FreeSoft’s LiberatorWorkbench modernization framework. The artifacts included in the project:

  • In excess of 5.6 million lines of Natural Code
  • Utilities to convert and normalize +-250 ADABAS files to relational models e.g. Oracle/MS SQL for multiple client instances of the package (including production, archiving and history instances and indexes, triggers and views across the database instances)
  • Utilities to execute the end-to-end ETL (extract, transform load) of hundreds of millions od ADABAS data rows to the relevant RDMS tables, inclusive of triggers, indexes, end-to-end balancing and reconciliations within pre-defined time window

In addition to the full conversion, implementation, 3rd party integrations, support and enhancements of this ERP package, the scope of the project also included the development and implementation of job scheduling and output management software to manage the scheduling and execution of batch jobs and their relevant output.

Solution

Applied technologies and methods in the projects were the automated tools of FreeSoft’s LiberatorWorkbench framework including:

  • KnowledgeLiberator for parsing Natural source code, modelling
  • CodeLiberator for converting all Natural objects to thin-clinet Java and Java batch
  • DataLiberator for converting database schema and generating ETL (extract, transform, load) scripts

Benefits realized by customer

  • The entire existing ERP package implemented on a future proof technology stack
  • No need for further integration or screen scraping for accessing on-line functions from internet browsers
  • Database and application server agnostic solution, flexible options for end-user implementation

Ingres database and 4GL migration to Oracle

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The customer Corning is one of the world’s leading producers of fiber-optic cable. It also produces fiber optic components, liquid crystal display glass, projection video lenses, laboratory equipment, substrates for emissions control and specialty glass such as high purity fused silica – a glass used in space shuttle windows and telescope mirror blanks, used in observatories around the world.

The Project

Corning GmbH decided to migrate its Ingres databases and ABF applications to Oracle platform, including the database schema, 4GL procedures, rules, events and the data. The original application contained ca. 0.5 millions of line of code and more than 1,000 screens.

Solution

FreeSoft utilized its LiberatorWorkbench framework to deliver the project. The operating system for the legacy database was OPEN/VMS running on an COMPAQ-ALPHA and that was not changed. The Ingres database was converted to Oracle while Ingres ABF clients were converted to Oracle clients running on Microsoft Windows.

Benefits realized by customer

  • Retire Ingres database and outdated ABF platform
  • Implement business logic on strategic Oracle stack

Informix 4GL and database migration to Java and Oracle

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The client LGN – Lower-Saxonian Cadastral Administration Agency (public administration, Germany) decided to migrate its administration system (AGN) from Informix 4GL platform to Java using FreeSoft’s LiberatorWorkbench technology with Siemens Business Services being the prime contractor and a strategic partner in migration services.

The Project

The Application serves 14 Authorities for Geo-information, Land and Real Estate Management with 53 local cadastral offices. The size of the original 4GL application was in the magnitude of 400 forms and 350,000 lines of code.

Primary objective of the project was to migrate the AGN application with all functionality from Informix 4GL to Java. The conversion was accomplished in three phases:

  • Automated conversion of Informix 4GL to Java
  • Database migration from Informix to Oracle
  • Testing and QA, tuning

Solution

The project was a typical but complex migration process with the following major work groups:

  • Planning the target scenario
  • Prototype
  • Automated migration oif the database and application conversion
  • Testing and QA, iterations
  • Implementation and training

Benefits realized by LGN

  • Saving the value in legacy IT assets by moving business logic to strategic Java and Oracle platform
  • Isolating core business logic from external interfaces such as reporting and XML-processing

Mainframe DB2 DataWarhouse downsizing to UNIX/Oracle and COBOL re-platforming

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The client is the leading provider of prescription drugs and human vaccines. The core strategy of Client was to create value by rapidly developing, launching and successfully marketing innovative pharmaceuticals that satisfy unmet medical needs in large patient populations.
FreeSoft as a technology provider and migration partner was subcontractor of Oracle in the project.

The Project

Client approved a cost savings initiative to move all applications running on the IBM ES9000 machine using the OS/390 operating system to a HP UNIX platform. All source databases on the ES9000 were migrated to the current version of Oracle. All application processes originally running on the ES9000, the ETL processes associated with the SAP Data Warehouse data feed had been migrated. FreeSoft’s major work groups in the project:

  • Create the Oracle Physical Database (up to 4200 tables, some hundreds of views)
  • Initial Load of the Oracle Database
  • Re-platforming of the ETL processes

Solution

FreeSoft utilized its LiberatorWorkbench framework to deliver the project. The following tools were used:

  • KnowledgeLiberator for analyzing the DB2 schema and control files
  • KnowledgeLiberator for analyzing the SQL procedures
  • DataLiberator for converting the Oracle schema and generating scripting for data transform and load process
  • CodeLiberator for COBOL re-platforming

Benefits realized by customer

  • Implement DW on the cusotmer’s strategic platform
  • Cost savings by retiring the current hardware platform and eliminating third party maintenance costs

Are any legacy specific programming structures supported by your tools like REDEFINE, or multidimensional array?

Practically all these kinds of features or built-in services of legacy programming languages are supported by our solution. Without supporting these it is not possible to convert one language to another without changing the results of business transactions and one of our strongest principals is to keep the data, services and functions of a legacy system unchanged. If any of these are modified in a modernization project they will have an influence on the daily business of the organization and we need to avoid that in order to mitigate further risk.

What kind of quality assurance processes do you have? How can we make sure that your solution results in a precise migration?

Our modernization framework supports more levels of QA during the conversion. Besides unit testing and code quality gates for the converted source code we also provide test automation tools for the functional testing. In a technical modernization project functional testing means the comparison of business functions’ and transactions’ results between the legacy and the converted systems. We provide a tool for test automation in order to reduce testing effort and the need for tester resources in the projects. For further information on our test automation tool AppTester please visit the Tools page and feel free to request a demonstration as well so that we can show you how it works!

Can you provide some ball-park estimate of time and cost of our migration project?

Yes we can, but we need some information from you first! Since we provide services and not licences we have to ascertain the size and complexity of your application and a couple of other circumstances (e.g. your concept of the target scenario; integration points, like interfaces; planned task split; etc.) in order to develop any estimate.
We are happy to run a quick analysis on your source code with our KnowledgeLiberator tool to measure complexity, please apply for a free code analysis if you are interested!

What type and how much training do the end-users need to be productive with the converted system?

Actually the impact on end-users is minimal! We do technological modernization so we replace the platform (database engine; programming language; etc.) while keeping the functionality of the legacy application unchanged. It means that the converted application provides the original identical output for the users both on the screens in on-line mode and also in batch mode. The end-users can practically work with the converted system without any training. There might be some minor changes like accessing the business functions on a webpage instead of on the 3270 terminals, or accessing batch/print files in a different application than before, but the functions and flow remains the same.