Existing applications have accumulated a lot of technical debt over the years. Removing it could speed up maintenance significantly. In reality the task of improve the software by removing the obsolete parts is seldom performed. The risk of introducing errors and the cost of testing is the biggest reason for not doing anything.

RDW has been able to take up the task of removing technical debt in a secure manner. Delta’s AMELIO Modernization Platform plays a key role in this endeavour.

Technical Debt hampers Application Maintenance

The Netherlands Vehicle Authority (RDW) is a long-time user of Delta ADS, Delta Software Technology’s software development product suite. In the past decades, the key applications have grown and also been migrated to different platforms. All these changes over the years have decreased the maintainability of the application portfolio. To improve the maintainability of this application portfolio the decision was made to invest in the removal of technical debts (and 'Clean Code').

The task of discovering and safely removing technical debts is a complex one. To remove or change code from a program that you have written yourself might be an option but if it has been written years ago by a predecessor that is not available to consult is another question. It is not without reason that many programmers do not trust themselves to perform these type of program changes. They have a rightful fear of cascading side effects of a change.

Another obstacle arises because removing the technical debts involves many programs that are depending on each other to work correctly. The fact that all these programs must be changed at the same time leads to freezing them all preventing all other functional maintenance that is needed for the business.

Database Access – an Example of Reducing Technical Debt

RDW had implemented a new architecture for the database access in their applications which co-exists with an older way of accessing the data. This hybrid architecture was more and more considered to be a technical debt. A manual change was started for the less complex situations but in general a large portion remained and with the manual approach the completion would have taken many more years.

The remaining 9,000+ data access calls (of originally 16,000) contained also the most complex ones, some of them not yet made available in the new architecture. RDW decided to make use of Delta’s AMELIO Modernization Platform to perform an automated replacement of the remaining old data access architecture by the new one.

Transformation Step-by-Step

Knowing that the new data access architecture did not yet support all features of the old architecture, the chosen approach was to use the AMELIO Modernization Platform to create a learning factory to discover and perform all the necessary changes in the application sources. That didn’t have to be perfect for all possibilities in the beginning. No time was lost with specifying everything in all detail, the specification for the already performed manual transformation was used as a starting point. As a first step, the simpler data access types were analysed and transformed with the goal to make the programs productive even when they still contained other or more complex data access types using the old architecture. The next step was to remove the next type of data access, where the result from the previous step could be input as well as programs that were not handled by the factory before. This iterative process continued until at the end also the most complex data accesses were transformed.

"In the end our decision paid off. Using an automated approach also means almost no freeze and the possibility to change implementations at a very late stage. It enabled us to improve on the end result without any problem. With a manual approach, we would have passed the moment to do something in a different way long before."
Roland Römer - Product Owner RDW

Continuously Moving Forward

After the migration to the new Data Access architecture the AMELIO Modernization Platform will now be used as an environment to perform other mass changes in the application sources that will reduce the technical debt.

"We now see Delta’s AMELIO Modernization Platform as a kind of washing machine. As long as we chose the right program it will remove a ‘stain’ (technical debt) from our applications. It’s a great solution for when we have mass changes that need to be carried out on our application portfolio."
Gert-Jan Theuwissen - Division Manager RDW ICT

About RDW

RDW ICT is the IT service provider of the national vehicle authority of The Netherlands. Their main tasks include the inspection and registration of vehicles, market authorisation of vehicles, administration of driving licenses, information services for the police – in total more than 300 million transactions annually. RDW repeatedly has been awarded as the best and most innovative government organization, for best management and best annual results.

Convince Yourself

Interested in reducing the technical debt in your applications? Contact us and let us prepare a demo with some of your sources.

On behalf of a large insurer, msg Systems ag Switzerland was looking for an analysis tool to rewrite parts of a business-critical core application. For this purpose, a tool should be found that automatically extracts the business logic from the application and displays it clearly so that it can be understood more quickly and transferred into a new language.

There are special hurdles to overcome in modernization projects: On the one hand, some of the original developers are no longer available. Instead, the applications are maintained by their "heirs" who, however, know nothing of the origins and the reasons for certain decisions. On the other hand, the existing documentation is used to support the maintenance. But for modernization or rewriting information is required that the documentation usually does not provide. Thus, the only reliable source is the source code itself. The problem is aggravated when a service provider wants to understand or modernize a customer's application. So how can the knowledge necessary for modernization be transferred and possibly even regained?

The msg is confronted with this task - for a large insurance company, parts of a business-critical core application should be rewritten. The existing application was developed in COBOL and PL/I, partly native and partly generated with Delta ADS. The msg decided to evaluate the performance of AMELIO Logic Discovery. A part of this application has been removed and analyzed and assessed manually and automatically. It quickly became clear:

"AMELIO Logic Discovery helps and presents everything very clearly!"
msg Systems

AMELIO works model-oriented and makes the analysis results available as language-neutral documentation. AMELIO is configurable and can be perfectly adapted to the needs of a (modernization) project.

Clear Recommendation for AMELIO

The msg is convinced that AMELIO is a great help with modernization and offers support with the conversion. The knowledge of an application can be built up faster, easier and more securely so that it can be rewritten more efficiently.

About the msg Group

The msg systems ag Switzerland is part of msg, an independent group of companies with more than 8,500 employees. The msg group is active in 28 countries in the automotive, banking, consumer products, food, healthcare, insurance, life science & chemicals, manufacturing, public sector, telecommunications, travel & logistics and utilities sectors and supports its customers in their digital transformation.

See for Yourself

Do you also have business-critical core applications and are looking for a way to analyze them fully automatically and reliably?
Then contact us. We would be happy to show you the capabilities of AMELIO Logic Discovery using your examples.

The project has successfully completed. You can find the project report here:

IMS Replacement at Gothaer: In Time – In Budget – In Scope

Together with Delta Software Technology GmbH, Gothaer Systems is consolidating its IMS databases into IBM Db2.

Gothaer Systems (GoSys) aims to migrate all its data stored in IMS/DB to new Db2 structures. IMS/DB data access calls in the existing COBOL programs (both native and generated with Delta ADS) should be replaced automatically, with the aim of completely replacing the IMS databases. Delta Software Technology (Delta) offers know-how and the right tools for this task. By building a tailor-made factory with AMELIO Modernization Platform (AMELIO), all necessary steps for the migration can be performed automatically.

Proof of Concept

In the first step, Delta presented the procedure and the basic functionality for the automated transformations with AMELIO. After a successful proof of concept, in which the concepts and techniques of the fully automatic transformation were verified, GoSys decided to go this path together with Delta.

Project started

We are currently in the middle of the project: In close coordination between GoSys and Delta, the AMELIO-Factory has been successfully configured and is constantly being expanded. Regular maintenance and further development continues during the setup phase. The resulting new versions of source modules are included in the ongoing AMELIO work. After the successful transformation of the applications, they are transferred to GoSys in order to check and approve these modules using meta-level testing.

The first packages with IMS databases and all of their data and applications have now been successfully transformed to use Db2 and are in productive use.

Get to know AMELIO and Delta as well

Due to the high degree of automation, transformations can be repeated, understood and reproduced at any time. Freeze periods are reduced to a few days. The migration can be divided into packages and the result is applications that can still be used and maintained without a footprint or vendor lock-in.

• Would you like to find out more about such migration projects or are you planning a modernization or refactoring?
• Do you want to migrate an application package to a new platform?
• Are you interested in mass change automation?

We would be happy to show you which options the AMELIO Modernization Platform offers you. We are looking forward to your contact.

About Gothaer Systems

„Gothaer Systems is the central IT service provider for the Gothaer Group. We ensure that Gothaer is always up to date with the latest information technology: through innovations and continuous further development of technology and organization. We also provide the infrastructure for the access to data and business processes. This is how we ensure a high level of IT quality within the group - and thus support Gothaer's business.“

Further Information

Here you can find more articles on the topic:

• IMS Replacement at Gothaer: In Time – In Budget – In Scope
• Provinzial realizes complete migration from IBM IMS/DB to IBM Db2 with Delta
• Automatically replacing IBM IMS/DB
• Successfully Replace IMS Databases
• IBM IMS/DB? Modernization Now!
• Modernization Project at BSQ Bauspar AG
  
  

A modern development environment is the goal for the software developers of a large insurer. Together with Micro Focus and Delta Software Technology, the insurance company examined the connection of Delta ADS to Micro Focus Enterprise Developer for Z.

The insurance company based in Germany successfully uses the Delta ADS for COBOL generator from Delta Software Technology (Delta) for decades. The ADS programs are developed on the host, maintained and then generated in COBOL tailor-made to the customer’s requirements.

In order to provide the developers with a modern development environment, several approaches from various manufacturers were assessed. The long-term goal is to offer Java developers as well as COBOL and Delta ADS developers a uniform platform. The decision was made to perform a more in-depth analysis of Micro Focus Enterprise Developer for Z (Micro Focus EDz) and Delta ADS on Eclipse. The use of Delta ADS on Eclipse has the advantage that it can be integrated directly into all Eclipse-based environments.

Added value created

With the help of Delta ADS on Eclipse (respectively ADS on Micro Focus EDz), the development and maintenance of the Delta programs is greatly simplified and modernized. By using analysis and coverage functions as well as the use of the post-generation debugger, the maintenance is accelerated because the application heirs have easier access to the ADS programs. It is also possible to offload the generation process of the ADS programs to the PC. This saves, among other things, valuable CPU time on the mainframe.

Delta ADS on Micro Focus Enterprise Developer for Z
 

Thanks to the good partnership between Micro Focus GmbH and Delta, nothing stood in the way of expanding the Delta ADS connection to Micro Focus EDz. The development and generation processes of Delta ADS programs were seamlessly integrated into Micro Focus EDz. This made it possible to provide the insurance company with a uniform solution.

The insurance company has now successfully put this joint solution through its paces and found it to be good. Nothing stands in the way of a long-term use.

Go the same way

Would you also like to provide your developers with a modern and integrated development environment? Get in touch with us, ADS on Eclipse is also available for other Eclipse-based development environments and Microsoft Visual Studio. In addition, active Delta customers receive the upgrade to the latest Delta ADS version free of charge.

Go the same way and simplify the maintenance and development of your Delta ADS applications - the application heirs will thank you.

„For us it is and has always been of crucial importance that the Delta tools are supported in the long term. This also means that they are constantly being developed to meet new requirements, always on the cutting edge of technology. An excellent example of this is the extensive integration into the open standard Eclipse. That fits perfectly into our strategy of a modern and future-proof development landscape.“
Peter Bauch,Management Board, B+S Banksysteme

More about ADS on Eclipse

Would you like to know how you can easily perform your application development with ADS under Eclipse? Please contact us.