Newsletter December 2006

An Alternative View of Legacy for 2007¹

There's an alternate point of view growing since the "Dot Com" bubble burst in 1999 that legacy systems are simply (and only) computer systems that are both installed and working. In other words, the term is not at all pejorative quite the opposite. Perhaps the term "legacy" is only an effort by computer industry salesmen to generate artificial churn in order to encourage purchase of unneeded technology.

IT analysts estimate that the cost to replace business logic is about five times that of reuse, and that's not counting the risks involved in wholesale replacement. Shareholders and managers are increasingly asking, "Why are we spending so much money on new technology with so little to show for it?" Ideally businesses would never have to rewrite most core business logic. After all, debits must equal credits they always have, and they always

will. Businesses and governments are also recoiling at well-publicized system failures and security breaches that all too commonly arrive with new Software - failures which are utterly catastrophic in many cases.

There's also a growing backlash against large, packaged software products (SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and others) which were oversold and in some cases have proven too costly, inflexible, and poorly matched to business needs.

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don't last. Thus, many organizations are rediscovering not only the value in the legacy systems themselves but also their philosophical underpinnings.

Genius Solution a Positive Legacy

RapidGen Software customers in common with all large enterprises, will continually face these issues. Some, to our regret, have taken the 'conventional' route and opted for the risk and expense of new platforms and packaged applications. Others have recognized that Genius is built on sound architecture and good software engineering practice and take the 'Legacy Transformation' perspective. Genius has performed well in large scale mission critical installations and continues to deliver a very positive return on investment. Applications built using Genius can continue to evolve and extend their reach at a fraction of the cost and risk of embarking on a total migration.

RapidGen Software's customers have the almost unique advantage that the team who developed and maintain Genius are available to work with you to plan and implement the transformations that will ensure your applications continue to deliver the information your stakeholders require and in the medium that best fits the purpose.

¹ Reprinted from

Http://en.wikipedia,org/wiki/Legacy_system

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Increasingly the IT industry is responding to these understandable business concerns. "Legacy modernization" and "legacy transformation" are now popular

terms, and they mean reusing and refactoring existing, core business logic by providing new user interfaces (typically Web interfaces) and service-enabled access (e.g., through Web services). These techniques allow organizations to understand their existing code assets (using discovery tools), provide new user and application interfaces to existing code, improve workflow, contain costs, minimize risk, and enjoy classic qualities of service (near 100% uptime, security, scalability, etc.). Technology companies involved in "enterprise transformation," are growing and profiting by what many people feel is a more rational approach toward legacy systems.

The re-examination of attitudes toward legacy systems is also inviting more reflection on what makes legacy systems as durable as they are. Technologists are relearning the fact that sound architecture, practiced up front, helps businesses avoid costly and risky rewrites in the first place. The most common legacy systems tend to be those which embraced well-known IT architectural principles, with careful planning and strict methodology during implementation. Poorly designed systems (which violate the architectural principle of separating business logic from presentation logic and data access)

On the VMS system you have to define the TCPIP service RSRRMS, which runs the RSRRMS rpl program to deal with connections from Windows clients, and can thus use any file access modes that you would normally use.

On Windows, you need to start by setting up an icon on the desktop to start RPL with the correct default directory to pickup an RSRV24.INI file which defines necessary logical names, such as RSR_DATA:, and uses a suitable default directory for your application.

If your file resides on OpenVMS node MOO:: inTREE$DISK:[GSD.REMOTE]DATAFILE.DAT

This would require an RSRV24.INI file such as

[Environment]

RSR_REMOTE=MOO

RSR_DATA=RSR_REMOTE::TREE$DISK:[GSD.REMOTE]

RSR_DATA2=RSR_REMOTE::.

Which defines the logicals RSR_REMOTE and RSR_DATA etc.

You can take a program which runs on a VMS system using local RMS files, copy the sources and data dictionary to the Windows system.

Then you need to use DBIND to bind the file definitions to the particular logicals for the files.

RCM> DBIND REMOTE RSR$DATA: DDSFILENAME

RCM> DBIND REMOTE RSR$DATA2: DDSFILENAME2

RCM> .

You also need to make sure that the nodename (MOO in this case) is known to the Windows system (eg by DNS or Hosts file)

And then recompile your program on the Windows system.

If you now double-click on the desktop icon, the program should run and access the files directly on the VMS host system.

Technical Details

The Windows runtime system recognises the presence of a Nodename in VMS format as a request to access a remote file using TCP/IP as the transport, and passes the rest of the name without translation. The VMS host must be running TCPWARE, UCX or TCPIP.

LINKER-REMOTE is a separate chargeable component required on the VMS System.

Genius Solution for Windows is licenced separately, per system.

Tools to a wide variety of relational and non-relational databases. Later projects included upgrading the VAX runtime system, writing and maintaining a new version in C for porting to other platforms (OpenVMS Alpha, Windows and various Unix/Linux systems), and developing an RPL compiler for the Intel Itanium processor. He left in 2003 to work for Oxford University again, but is back working part-time for RapidGen Software Ltd. Current projects include completion of the Itanium compiler, development of an Alpha emulator to aid porting to new hardware, and use of XML/XSLT to enhance the presentation capabilities of easyGenius.

OpenVMS/Alpha 8.3

We have now conducted extensive tests including upgrading existing installations with Genius installed to OpenVMS 8.3 and fresh installations on both ODS2 and ODS5 on clean OpenVMS installations without problems.

The entire Genius build procedure is now also performed on VMS 8.3 as part of the regular process of checking changes on all platforms.

In 1977 he moved to the Engineering department to develop a departmental computing facility which later included one of the first VAX systems in the UK. Projects included custom device drivers, a technical/scientific word processing system for theses & papers, a hardcopy system for raster-scan graphics terminals using dot-matrix and laser printers, and a simple relational database system based on RMS indexed files.

Jolyon joined Rapid-Gen Systems Ltd. in 1986 and later became Head of Development. One of his first tasks was the creation of a standard framework for transparently interfacing Rapid-Gen (later Genius)