ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Transforming a Complex Application (ARCH-09)

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Outline Why convert? Goals of converting Follow-up projects What are the choices when converting? Dynamic or static screens? How could converted code work? Code and screen samples Questions

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Why Convert? All the things you have heard at Exchange already Progress client server applications are beginning to look stale which affects the sales cycle System wide features that we wanted to add Localization New form factors Ease of deployment

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Goals of Converting Technology will change - it shouldn’t be as hard next time It should look like Windows It should act better than Windows It should provide a platform for the future It should make system wide changes easier Localizable

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Goals of Converting Customizable Thin client architecture Ease of deployment Consistent user experience

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Follow-up Projects Localization Regionalized Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) …

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Conversion Options Total rewrite –Take a team of people and develop a new system from scratch using your old system as a guideline Screen by screen –Take a team of people and go from the first screen to the last screen and convert them one by one Conversion tool –Take a team and develop a way to convert your code from the way you have it to the way you want it programmatically

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Total Rewrite Pros: –You get to use the latest and greatest technology and you don’t need to worry about what you already have –Few limits except your budget Cons: –The team is going to work off a code base and feature set and unless you plan on stopping new development on the existing software you end up with two products with different feature sets –The new application generally ends up much less feature rich than the old one for a long period of time –Time to market –There is a very high probability of project failure

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Screen by Screen Pros –Provable milestones –Can have a staged release Cons –Development needs to stop on the old module while converting or need to retrofit new work –As the standards evolve for the new product you need to revisit the already converted code and update it –Will have a mutated product to sell for a while

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Conversion Program Pros: –The conversion can be run often, resulting in little loss of feature development on the old application –As the standards for the new system evolve and improve, the process can be rerun allowing fixes to the conversion utility which will fix the rest of the system Cons: –This takes the longest amount of time before you can show the first couple of screens.

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved The Other Conversion Choice Dynamic screens vs. Static screens –Static screens: Faster load time Use standard tools to modify (Visual Studio) Harder to upgrade next time –Dynamic screens: Easier to allow user customization Easier to replace next time Enforces standards /allows changes to standards better Simpler Globalization configuration Simpler look and feel More options

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved How Would It Work? There are 3 application layers –DB server on any Progress platform –Application Server Progress AppServer running the business logic of your application No direct client interaction done at this layer UNIX or Windows Can be the same machine as the DB server –Client Computer Running on Windows No connection to the database No knowledge of the application at this level

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved How Would It Work? Two connections –Application Server to Client Computer Pass requests to do work Using standard procedures “Update this field on the screen” “Validate this data” –Application Server to DB Server All the traditional Progress db communications such as FOR EACH, FOR FIRST, etc.

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved How Would It Work? (By Example) Setup

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved How Would It Work? (By Example) User types in “motors” and hits TAB to leave the field

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved How Would It Work? (By Example) –The AppServer reads the changed data and updates the server program with the new data (the category screen value is “motors” when before it was blank) –The AppServer then translates the request (leave the category field) into a call to a procedure –The server code runs on the AppServer which calls the database as needed –The old code that updated the screen directly has been modified to a call that updates the request table to send back to the client –When the procedure is done the Application server returns a list of updates to the screen that need to be processed (mark this field as sensitive, put this value in this field, hide this button, etc.)

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved How Would It Work? (By Example) –Finally

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved /******* existing code *******/ ON LEAVE OF scr-cat IN FRAME F-Main /* Category */ DO WITH FRAME {&FRAME-NAME}: IF scr-cat:SCREEN-VALUE <> scr-cat THEN DO: ASSIGN scr-cat. FIND FIRST category WHERE category.category-code = scr-cat NO-LOCK NO-ERROR. IF AVAILABLE(category) THEN ASSIGN scr-cat:SCREEN-VALUE = category.category-code scr-cat save-cat-key = category.category-key. END. Old Code vs. New Code

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Old Code vs. New Code /******* converted code *******/ PROCEDURE leave_scr-cat : DO : IF get-screen-value("scr-cat") <> scr-cat THEN DO: ASSIGN scr-cat =get-screen-value("scr-cat"). FIND FIRST category WHERE category.category-code = scr-cat NO-LOCK NO-ERROR. IF AVAILABLE(category) THEN DO: RUN set-state ("scr-cat“, "SCREEN-VALUE", category.category-code ). ASSIGN scr-cat = get-screen-value("scr-cat") save-cat-key = category.category-key. END.

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Before And After Samples Menu system - before

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Before And After Samples Menu system – after

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Before And After Samples EIS Information - before

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Before And After Samples EIS Information – after

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Before And After Samples EIS Information – after

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Before And After Samples Product Maintenance - before

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Before And After Samples Product Maintenance – after

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Modify Screens and Logic

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Add and Rename Fields

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Add Dashboards

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Individual Look and Feel Icons Colors Fonts Tool bars Screen designs

ARCH-09: Transforming a Complex Application Apprise® is a registered trademark of Apprise Software, Inc. Transcendix SM is a service mark and trademark of Transcendix LLC © 2005 All Rights Reserved Questions? Jeff Broadhurst – Apprise Software, Inc. Kevin Ryer – Transcendix LLC