14 th Annual Natural Conference Application Reengineering Effort Pays Big Dividends in eServices California State Board of Equalization

Overview BOE Background Reengineering EntireX ACI: Web clients w/ Mainframe Servers EntireX ACI: Mainframe clients w/ non-Mainframe servers JavaService: design/code example RPC Servers in Mainframe Batch Natural The Future of RPC at BOE Q & A

Background

California Board of Equalization Taxing Agency Over $40 billion annually Over a third of California tax revenue A financial institution An information source

Reengineering

Before Reengineering Entered the 1990s with: Stove pipe type systems Redundant de-normalized data structures Running on in-house mainframe

Reengineering Summary Entire Business process was inspected Business Entities and workflows identified Normalized relational data model created Object oriented principles introduced: Reusable components, Encapsulation Presentation, rules, I/O layer separation principles Natural and Adabas selected Natural, coded with OO & layer separation principles Adabas, files defined with relational principles Moved to State data center Integrated Revenue Information System (IRIS)

EntireX Advanced Communication Interface(ACI) examples: Web clients with Mainframe Servers

First EntireX Application Seller’s Permit

Seller’s Permit Web query of Seller’s tax status Read only, no updates EntireX ACI, code both client and server ASP/Delphi Web client presentation Mainframe batch Natural/Adabas ACI server Co-developed with Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) and CICS client presentations Reuse of rules and I/O layer objects

Business-to-Government (B2G) Example

Electronic Return – late rd party Electronic Return Originator (ERO) Web presentation Messaging format is XML A Web service (w/o the SOAP envelope) Real-time updates to Adabas and Tamino Selected fields saved first to Adabas Complete Tax filing saved as XML in Tamino Delphi ACI on mid-tier Mainframe batch Natural/Adabas ACI server Reuse of existing Mainframe Natural backend

EntireX ACI examples: Mainframe clients with non-Mainframe servers

Mainframe Clients with: Visual Basic Desktop Servers JAVA Mid-tier Servers

JavaService : design/code example Late 2002 From Mainframe Natural to Mid-tier Java Encapsulate Java

JavaService – Mainframe Components Application object: uses standard Callnat Validation object: Natural subprogram, checks parameters, adds Java Classpath ACI client: Natural subprogram, selects Broker node and class, sends and receives Broker message

Send Example

Parameter Data Area

Application object

VALIDATE object - excerpts

ACI Client - excerpts

XML Template - excerpt

Extending JavaService

Mainframe Batch Natural RPC Servers

Journey into RPC Servers Issues: Higher administration with ACI servers, always a need for a new service and servers Leveraging existing ACI servers not viable option Resistance: Know and trust ACI servers

ACI Server Proliferation ACI Server Count Year ProdTest/Devl Sellers Permit ERO Filing B2G Fuels Filing Total Server Count = 19 Total Service Definition Count = 19

Seller Permit ACI Server Had multi-use data area with ACTION field to direct secondary subprogram CALLNATs via a controlling subprogram There was always “developer anxiety” associated with changes to the controlling subprogram Developers did not want other subsystems using the controlling subprogram

Resistance to RPC New technology ACI servers already proven No time for Research and Development The next project already had a hard delivery date

We took the gamble RPC has paid back big time!

Benefits of RPC Tangible (original goal): Reduced administration Reduced service definition and server count No more coding of Natural servers Intangible: Natural Interface Definition Language (IDL) object generation Wrapper generation for: Java, WSDL, etc. Error handling Trace facilities

IDL/Wrapper Generator Java programmers now worked with generated Java wrapper objects versus parsing data strings The generated Java wrapper object performed the complex task of language-dependent data alignment Leveraged many existing IRIS subprograms (e.g. Tax Calculator subprogram) Wrapped existing mainframe rules and exposed via EntireX versus duplicating rules on another platform

IDL/Wrapper Generator – cont. Allowed Java developers to utilize existing mainframe Natural data areas without the overhead of having to code for each variable Changed the focus to the data being passed between Java and Natural versus the technical issues of dealing with the data at either end Java programmers feel enabled with the Natural IDL and Java wrapper generator

IDL/Wrapper Generator – cont. Faster development, a few clicks of the mouse and the Natural IDL and Java wrapper objects are generated Regenerate Natural IDL and Java wrapper objects if Natural PDA changes – no more bit-by-bit parsing changes within Java

RPC Server Error handling The RPC server acts similar to a CICS region in that individual transactions do not bring down the server

RPC Trace Facilities Adjustable setting: 0- Nothing is traced. 1- Only messages (inclusive Natural errors) are traced. (1,E) - Messages are traced in the event of an error only. 2- All messages and data from/to client are traced. (2,E) - Messages and data from/to client are traced in the event of an error only.

The Future of RPC at BOE

Old ACI servers and services will be retired as time permits. The Seller’s Permit has already been converted. Logging RPC errors from user exit NATRPC01 to generalized Error log reporting mechanism Additional production RPC server instances (i.e. batch jobs) will be added to support increasing load XML/SOAP Wrappers and Web Services

Thank you!