Databorough in the News...

Article : Synon/2E Model: Modern or Legacy?

By Steve Kilner
What’s modern about 2E applications?  Even ones developed in the ‘80’s?  If you can answer that question you’ve got a an excellent start towards reengineering your applications.

What’s not modern about 2E?
The code that you see – the generated code - is certainly not modern.  Besides being RPG IV, it is also monolithic, procedural, and runs only on a single mainframe-style platform deployed in the ‘80’s.
It also has the unfortunate trait of being impractical to maintain the generated code.

Read more...

Article : What is the biggest threat to AS/400 Managers?

“Owners of legacy RPG applications are faced with the threat of losing knowledge of their applications before they have time to reengineer or replace them.”

I overheard that remark recently – it was in the context of a discussion about the ever-dwindling pool of RPG programmers.

All existing applications on all platforms, in all languages, will eventually be replaced. That replacement takes the form of a) a rewrite, often in another language, or b) the purchase of packaged software.

And here’s the point that clicked for me: in either case, knowledge of the existing applications is critical. Without that knowledge the transition will be far more risky, lengthy and expensive – we all know this from experience.

Article : RPG Reengineering - Save Your AS/400 and Your Job

RPG developers have wondered for years if there would ever be a way to automatically convert those giant, old, interactive RPG code monsters into a modern architecture.

Is there any way to salvage all that code that has so much vital, valuable business logic in it? And make it more maintainable? And truly modern?!?!

Rather unbelievably, a solution has emerged. And it came from a direction maybe no one was expecting. But is totally logical once you think about it.

Article : IBM i: Extinction? Another Raging Debate on LinkedIn!

Few things in IT have lasted longer than the debate about the future of the AS/400-IBM i.

Over the last few weeks another round of the debate took place, unplanned, on LinkedIn. (I’ve posted the discussion group name at the end of this article.)

Here you had normally well-behaved, middle-aged, professional people resorting to name calling, anger, and yes, even Jesus.

What was the outcome of this free for all?

Article : Next Victim of the AS400 Brain Drain

Have you ever put the words documentation and urgent in the same sentence? I bet not, but I bet I can convince you that you should.

IT people with decades of AS/400 systems knowledge are leaving in large numbers, whether from retirement, layoffs, career changes – sometimes planned, sometimes unplanned. Naturally, they are taking their knowledge with them.

Can you put a price tag on how much that loss of knowledge will cost you? You actually can estimate it – it’s something you should know! Here is a guide to calculating the value of employee knowledge .

Article : Five Secrets of Software Metrics

Do you measure the complexity of your software? There are some surprising real-world benefits from doing so:

1. Developing more quantifiable programming estimates and project plans
2. Quantifying the barriers to modernization
3. Clarifying and quantifying for users the challenges of difficult enhancements
4. Quantifying the impact of installing new packaged releases
5. Gauging the quality of outsourced work

Article : Five Reasons to Measure the Complexity of Your Software

How complex is your software? What are the top 1% most complex subroutines in your system? How often do you maintain them? Why?

How do you get answers to these questions?

Some of the benefits of knowing the answers are:

1. achieve more predictability in managing software projects
2. lower the risk of introducing defects into production
3. reduce software maintenance costs
4. preserve and enhance the value of your software asset
5. estimate when it is better to rewritethan to keep maintaining it

Articles : System i Network by Robert Cancilla

Application Mapping – Special System i News Series

Robert Cancilla authors a series of four articles on how Application Mapping has changed the way companies are managing, maintaining and modernizing their Legacy IBM i Applications. . Read more...

Graphical Analysis & Modernization of CA 2E (SYNON) Webinar

Join us for a Webinar on May 27

Databorough announces X-2E : Graphical Analysis, Documentation, Design Recovery & Migration to Java or C# for CA 2E (SYNON) Applications. Read more...

X-Analysis Lite Unveiled - IT Jungle

Databorough Unveils 'Lite' Version of Application Analysis Tool

Databorough last week unveiled a stripped down "Lite" version of X-Analysis, its cross-referencing and documentation tool for IBM i OS applications. Read more...

Article : System i Network by Paul Conte

Strategies to create new applications from legacy code

In this in-depth article, industry expert Paul Conte describes how to recycle and reuse mission critical logic in your legacy RPG applications. Read more...

Educational Webcast Recording: System iNetwork

Modernization Essentials: Recycling Your RPG Code

Paul Conte teaches you how you can use refactoring, code mining, design extraction, and other techniques to create new applications that fully exploit your existing code. Recycling code is also an adaptive approach that lets your IT group use incremental and iterative development practices to produce future applications that have a modern architecture as well as updated interfaces. This recorded webcast provides a fresh, highly informative look at the challenge of application modernization. Register here...

Databorough Partners with Genuitec - IT Jungle

Databorough Teams with Genuitec to Push Alternative Eclipse IDE

If imitation truly was the sincerest form of flattery, the IT industry would be awash in butterflies and rainbows. But it's not, and instead imitation is a tool in the Darwinian quest for survival. Read more....

Understanding and integrating - IBM Systems Magazine.

Three experts discuss the value of legacy applications and how they can move businesses forward.

Legacy applications. To some, the phrase brings to mind old, out-of-date software written in decades past in dead programming languages by people who no longer exist—and to some degree, they might be right. Many of these applications were in fact developed years ago and the programmers who created them may be long gone, having either moved on to other jobs or retired. Read more....

Solution Spotlight - System i News/Network

X Marks the Spot for Application Analysis

Reconstructing what applications do, what they touch, and how they impact other business operations can be difficult and time-consuming. Databorough’s X-Analysis solution automates the process and lets even non technical users analyze application functions. Read more....

Success Story - IBM Systems Magazine.

Databorough Helps Fiserv CBS Worldwide Quicken Development

X-Analysis has provided a fundamental capability to increase quality and timeliness in development and support."
- Mike Quested, product architect, Fiserv Read more....

Product Spotlight

Databorough: MAPICS Finds the Answer with X-Analysis-Feedback from Satisfied X-Analysis Users

"Within an hour of being introduced to the product, we have had new users, with very little knowledge of an application, create and drill down from a full application data model diagram into a data flow diagram to view every program that touches a selected file. They can jump from the data flow diagram directly down to the actual source code view and investigate the code," says Mark Rinker, Solutions Architect, iSeries*, MAPICS. "One of the best features we've found is, within seconds, the product can give you the exact business rules that are being executed within a program viewed as pseudo code." Read more....

The Four Hundred - IT Jungle

IBM's iSeries Rejuvenation Efforts Begin to Bear Fruit

The AS/400-iSeries line of computers is approaching its 17th birthday this month, and that is as good a time as any to take stock of the iSeries Initiative for Innovation, which Big Blue launched in February as a multi-prong technical, marketing, and sales push to get independent software providers and tool makers fired up about the iSeries platform. IBM has been busy, just trying to get a handle on the key ISVs in the market and what they need. One of the hot tools for this work is called X-Analysis, which was created by English tool maker Databorough and which is also a ServerProven application on the iSeries. Read more....