Legacy Mainframe Applications - Challenge
Siloed applications in mainframe environments which do not interact with other applications are a source of concern to organizations;
the worry is that one day the business logic will be inaccessible to the enterprise at large. The average Fortune 100 company maintains 35 million lines of legacy code; organizations
are looking to leverage this code portfolio.1 There is an aging population of programmers leading to a shrinking mainframe workforce; this means that over the long term, the skills available for working with, updating, and fixing this platform will
disappear. There is a narrowing window of opportunity to leverage an investment in mainframe environments by implementing a SOA: Service Oriented Architecture: accessing corporate data, exposing business processes embedded within applications, and modernizing interfaces.
SOA functions as both a software development environment and a delivery framework. It provides a mechanism for defining business services and operating models and as information technology infrastructure that can be used to meet enterprise business requirements and modernize their legacy environments. In a Service
Oriented Architecture, network nodes make resources available to other network participants as independent services, which participants can access in a standardized way through well-defined service interfaces.
Legacy Applications and Migration Strategies
Mainframe legacy applications serve as a repository to business processes and contain significant business value. That value will increase exponentially with the ability to share and use services across the enterprise. SOA can be used to incrementally enable a service-by-service replacement of legacy applications by isolating user-facing
applications from the implementation of relevant services. There is considerable complexity in this process and an enormous number of steps will be required to prepare for and navigate the process of
converting to a Service Oriented Architecture. Enterprise standards and security issues typically are well documented and rigorous testing processes typically will be in place on IBM mainframe
systems and be important in any migration.
Whatever modernization strategy that is adopted, the challenges will increase with the size of the MIPS - millions operations per second at the installation. In most cases there will be too many dependencies in an enterprise architecture for a global strategy to be feasible. A project by project approach will be required.
- Platform migration is the least invasive strategy. An application is ported from its native mainframe system software environment to a Wintel, UNIX, or Linux platform. And then be rehosted using IBM Rational or third
party software such as - Oracle SOA Suite 11g, Oracle Fusion, Oracle Tuxedo or CORBA - which provides an provides an equivalent set of APIs and functionality to mainframe
applications.
- Language migration involves three stages - language, platform, and database and poses the highest level of risk in implementation. It also offers the greatest potential
for benefits in modernizing to an SOA.
Studies by leading market research firms indicate that migration strategies have been highly dependent upon the installed MIPS. Organizations with fewer than 500 MIPS have been favoring language migration; while organizations with greater than 2000 MIPs have been using language migration. With successful SOA migrations, the assumption is that the threshold MIPS will be
adjusted. Applications reengineered to participate in SOA architectures will introduce the ability to build new composite applications.
IBM WebSphere MQ Middleware
Successful implementation of a Service Oriented Architecture requires that the applications and infrastructure support the SOA principles. Applications can be enabled by creating service interfaces to existing or new
functions hosted by the applications. The service interfaces need to be accessed using an infrastructure that can route and transport service requests to the correct service provider. As organizations
expose more functions as services, the infrastructure will need to support the management of SOA on an enterprise scale. IBM WebSphere MQ is being used in SOA environments to route and transport messages from one node to another. The design principles of granularity and modularity are resolved primarily at the application level. The use of such middleware as WebSphere MQ supports the
principles of an SOA implementation by:
- Decoupling the consumer's view of a service from the actual implementation of the service.
- Decoupling technical aspects of service interactions.
- Integrating and managing services in the enterprise.
Decoupling the consumer's view of a service from the actual implementation greatly increases the flexibility of the architecture.
It allows the substitution of one service provider for another without the consumer being aware of the change, or needing to be altered to support it. The aspect of loose coupling will be addressed by using messaging middleware.
IBM Rational Developer for System z
Rational Developer for System z is a development platform for delivering new information technology services which reduce application complexity, deploy new applications, and modernize
existing assets. It is being used to interactively test and deploy low-level programming languages, mainframe applications, and cross-platform web technologies.
Rational Developer for System z provides the capability to:
- use an interactive workstation-based environment for creating, maintaining, and reusing applications for traditional processing or for inclusion in a SOA: Service Oriented Architecture.
- access IBM z/OS datasets, UNIX System Services - HFS: Hierarchical File System, and System zFS: z File System files.
- create and modify Assembler, COBOL, PL/1, C, and C++, and Java applications with Remote Syntax Check and Content Assist.
- utilize code refactoring and analysis tools - Visual BMS mapping, JCL generation capabilities, Visual MFS editor, and color coded editing.
Rational Developer for System z supports:
- CICS, IMS, and Batch.
- DB2 and DB2 stored procedures.
- creating, maintaining, and debugging CICS and IMS system-based code.
- IMS and SQL: Structured Query Language.
- remote compile generation.
- build and deployment.
- integration with z/OS IBM Problem determination tools.
Programming Language Training by SYS-ED
The programmers you need may already be working for you!
Since 1980, SYS-ED has been helping organizations address their staffing requirements.
Fast-track and
integrated training programs for COBOL, Assembler, PL/1, Fortran, REXX, SAS, and FOCUS have been designed to meet the operating objectives of
Fortune 1000 companies, consulting companies, government municipalities, and healthcare providers in interrelated information technology.
SYS-ED’s credentials in terms of consultancy assignments, experience in information technology (it was data processing when we started!) and advanced degrees when it comes to legacy
programming languages and integration with IBM
WebSphere MQ middleware and
Rational
platform - CICS, IMS, and DB2, will in many situations be superior to that of the source software companies. Naturally, we also provide training on alternatives to IBM
middleware - and development platforms: Oracle Fusion, Microsoft .NET and both commercial and free open source implementations of Java. In fact, we get requests from
major software companies to provide programming language training for their
staff
and
clients.SYS-ED reviews information in the public domain distributed by software companies, international standards committees, and purveyors of open source software. We perform our own independent analysis and assessments of benchmarks for software updates and new products. Vendor documentation and third party content is interpreted and selectively incorporated into our
courseware and training aids. SYS-ED clients are invited to submit programming language questions. SYS-ED staff and CETi Technology Partners
answer, explain, and where applicable reference source documentation. Questions are reviewed and answered on a first-come/first serve-basis.
SYS-ED provides value added service through our categorized and software specific websites: technology updates,
streamlined learning paths, and
assessment validation. The quality of our training service is reflected in the clients that we have provided
programming language training in volume.
Few training companies offer the scope and tailored levels of legacy programming languages courses that SYS-ED does.
Programming Language Courseware
An important component in the delivery of the programming language training was the development of programming language courseware: student hand-outs, sample programs, skeleton programs, workshops,
and training aids. SYS-ED courseware incorporates industry standard content and consultancy derived techniques for designing, coding, and debugging applications. The principles of adult learning are applied to the interpretation and translation of subject matter into performance objectives, narrative
descriptions, and diagrams which explain the architecture, design, and logic of the programming language. Our courseware library has been incrementally augmented, revised, and maintained. It is highly valued, especially with legacy programming languages where there is a scarcity of up to date text books and open source software documentation which
typically is less comprehensive than its commercial programming language counterpart. The legacy programming languages courseware is being expanded into a
learning center format
which can be reviewed in a advertising free environment.
As part of presenting an instructor-led information technology course at the client location, courseware is evaluated and organized for subsequent use in a
web-based infrastructure and delivery medium. This service is provided free of charge.
For organization’s which have a requirement for their own employees to teach programming languages or the need to have content available for presentation
through a web-based learning medium, we will tailor and
license our courseware.
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