Schorch Elektrische Maschinen und Antriebe GmbH

Schorch has benefited several times from the sustainabilitty and long-term feasibility of the platform-neutral development of their core applications with Delta products. The generative Delta products allowed Schorch a smooth platform migration by their “single source – multiple target” concept – cost-reduction by the push of a button.

Using Delta tools, Schorch also found a way to provide strategically important business functions by automated service enablement quickly and easily for the use in business portals – without any changes to the existing legacy applications.

About Schorch

Schorch is an electrical engineering manufacturer and specialises in the production of modern induction machines as individual components or as propulsion systems for all industrial and municipal application areas. Another focus is the delivery of electrical systems as well as extensive support. They are located in Mönchengladbach, Germany, and are part of the globally operating ATB group.

Platform Change at the Push of a Button

Schorch has invested heavily over many years to build a custom production management. The applications have been developed platform-neutral with ADS and generated for Fujitsu BS2000/OSD mainframes (formerly Siemens BS2000/OSD), TP monitor openUTM and DB system SESAM SQL.

Key feature of the development with ADS: single source – multiple targets

• platform independent, non-procedural declarations of programs
• their automatic generation for one or more target/deployment platforms.

A migration is therefore cost-effective and becomes a simple re-generation – platform change at the push of a button.

Single Source – Multiple Targets

Schorch took advantage of this for the migration of their production management from mainframe to Windows. The software components of the production management have been re-generated using the ADS target system for Microsoft Windows. The specialized ADS tools ensure the perfect support of all system specifics of the new platform with Microsoft Windows, Fujitsu NetCOBOL compiler and MySQL database. The applications have been stable and performant from the start.

“This project pointed out that ADS from Delta Software truly is a piece of gold.
The platform change was in principle a push of a button.”
Gerd Dietrich, Application Development Manager, Schorch, Mönchengladbach

The replacement of the BS2000/OSD platform included of course the replacement of the mainframe development environment and the processes implemented there. By using SCOUT² Development Platform, all Schorch-specific processes could simply be mapped in a way that the developers did not have to reorganize. The work became more efficient and the productivity of the development has been increased.

Products: ADS Legacy Platform Development and SCOUT² Development Platform

Service Enablement of Legacy Applications

Schorch investigated the possibilities of making business-critical legacy functionality of their existing, formerly mainframe-based production management available over an enterprise portal. The knowledge of client-sided technologies like Java, JSP, .NET or ASP was limited, the infrastructure was not yet specified.

Schorch decided for the automatic service enablement with SCORE Adaptive Bridges and an add-on for the already used Delta product ADS.

“SCORE Adaptive Bridges lets us ‘build bridges’ between the old and new world
without needing detailed technical skills in the middleware or portal environments.”
Gerd Dietrich, Application Development Manager, Schorch, Mönchengladbach

With SCORE Adaptive Brigdes, the developers very quickly were able to generate "ready to run" Java portlets. SCORE Adaptive Bridges automatically deployed these portlets into the enterprise portal where they were run using a UPIC connection to the legacy BS2000 applications.

No changes to the existing legacy applications were necessary for the service enablement.

Products: SCORE Adaptive Bridges

In the extensive modernisation project of RDW ICT described below, our solutions and products have impressively demonstrated that they successfully solve extensive and complex tasks by their methodical basis and extraordinary high degree of automation.

We are particularly proud of the statement by Gerard Doll, Director ICT, RDW regarding the successful co-operation with RDW ICT:

"Working with the people from Delta proved to be a very good choice. They delivered when other companies couldn’t. From RDW’s point of view Delta is a highly dedicated company with an even higher level of expertise. All the people from Delta we met have this dedication and expertise. And as a bonus: they are also very nice people to work with.
We have done business with a lot of companies but this is the first time I can, without holding back, truly recommend one: Delta has proven that it is a reliable and trustworthy partner."
Gerard Doll, Manager ICT, RDW, The Netherlands

About RDW

RDW ICT is the independent IT service provider of the national vehicle authority of The Netherlands. Their main tasks include the management of the information on more than 7 million vehicles, registrations and drivers’ licenses. RDW is also responsible for technical standards, vehicle approval, vehicle inspections, market authorisation of vehicles, information services for the police as well as for the safety and environmental monitoring - in total more than 300 million transactions annually.

Secure Modernisation: Step-by-step with Early Results

RDW repeatedly has been awarded as the best and most innovative government organization, for best management and best annual results. Security and quality of the products and methods have topmost priority for RDW ICT due to the required high availability of the sensitive applications.

RDW ICT secure their extensive IT investments by a step-by-step modernisation. The tools from Delta Software Technology ensure quality, security and reduce costs in the individual projects.

1^st Step: Modernising the Development Processes and Environment

Results:

• Efficient organisation of the cross-platform development and maintenance
  
  1. Secure and performant implementation of all development and change processes integrated by all platforms
  2. Complete support of the complex in-house development processes including the implementation of the custom development standards based on ITIL and RDW’s corporate IT Governance strategy
• Transfer of the development from mainframe to Microsoft Windows
  
  1. Modern integrated PC-based environment for the multi-platform development
  2. Integrate all development tools and multi-platform processes in a controlled environment
  3. Laid the foundation for the future modernisation of the IT

Product: SCOUT² Development Platform

Read more about the re-engineering of the development environment at RDW.

2^nd Step: Platform Independence and Extensive Architecture Transformation of the Applications

Results:

• Preparation for a platform change at the push of a button
  
  1. Completely and automatically removing all platform dependencies in more than 11,000 software components
  2. Flexibility at the migration concerning system selection, date and organisation
• Fully automated application transformation
  
  1. Modern and flexible application architecture
  2. Clear and easy maintainable layer architecture of the applications, the data accesses embedded in the programs have been transferred to performant external data servers
• Automatic generation of 3,200 high-performance data services
• Slashing testing efforts

Product: AMELIO Modernization Platform

Here you will get a short overview of the application modernisation at RDW.

For further information see the detailed project report:

3^rd Step: Platform Change from Mainframe to Microsoft Windows

Results:

• Reducing the platform costs by a migration from UNISYS OS 2200 to Microsoft Windows
• Error-free migration of the meanwhile platform-independent applications by simple re-generation with ADS for the new platform: Fujitsu NetCOBOL for .NET on Microsoft Windows
• Secure multi-step DB migration from UNISYS RDMS RSA to Microsoft SQL Server

Products: SCORE Data Architecture Integration, ADS Legacy Platform Development

The following interview with RDW shows the project from the customer's point of view. 

Further Information

All our solutions are designed to perform changes securely and smoothly. We are specialists for software tools that completely automate technical tasks.

Our solutions are flexible and individually adaptable. They help you with

• Modernization and migration of platforms, applications and databases
• Service enablement to build a SOA
• Integration of applications and data
• Development for different platforms

Further information on the products successfully used at RDW can be found here

• SCOUT² Development Platform
• AMELIO Modernization Platform
• SCORE Data Architecture Integration

Or get in touch with us.

In the "Settlement Porting" project MIAG C.V., Baar smoothly migrated an important application from an IBM VSE mainframe with CA-DATACOM to IBM AIX with Oracle. In this project ADSplus showed one of its greatest strengths: the ability to generate code for different target platforms from a single application specification.

“With this migration project we have achieved multiple objectives within the budgeted time and cost. The complete application was transferred from a host-based environment to a client-server platform with the addition of a GUI interface for the end users. The host environment was completely replaced. Using Delta products allowed the migration to quickly and efficiently proceed with the vast majority of the work being at the purely technical level.”

Silvio Hasler, Project Leader, MIAG C.V., Baar

Further Information

For more information about the MIAG C.V., Baar case study please see the Web site of our partner for Switzerland and Liechtenstein: SAXOS Informatik AG.