Decision Table Generators: Modernise, Consolidate or Replace?

Decision tables simplify software development and enable the implementation with clearly structured source code. Some enterprises use multiple decision table generators and the application heirs have to cope with the different techniques. An automated consolidation would facilitate the maintenance and reduce costs.

Decision tables are an important method for the clearly structured description of complex matters and the corresponding rule systems. The automated implementation of the decision logic in COBOL, PL/I and other languages is supported by various decision table generators, like VORELLE (gadiv, prev. mbp), LF-ET (Lohrfink), SWT (SWT), DETAB (Delta Software Technology) and others.

As part of the modernisation of their development environments and their IT applications, many companies today are reviewing their usage of these development tools:

• The manufacturers have discontinued the development and support for some decision table generators.
• Some generators are not available for new platforms.
• Some companies use several of these generators resulting in increased cost for tools, training and application maintenance.

Know-how Transfer and Costs

The usage of different generators for similar tasks requires that enterprises must train and keep the corresponding expertise. This unnecessarily complicates the transfer to new generations of application heirs. Therefore, it is advisable to consolidate the generator use and to stay with one technology only. In addition to facilitating the knowledge transfer, (maintenance) costs for third-party components can also be saved.

First Step: The Assessment

With the help of these generators, many very complex decision tables have been implemented. In order to get an overview of where which technology has been used in the applications and to what extent, Delta offers a comprehensive investigation. Such an assessment evaluates the feasibility of an automated replacement, consolidation or migration, shows different solution variants and identifies the problems for the project in order to create a reliable decision basis and to eliminate the risks.

Analysis, Evaluation and Transformation of Decision Tables

Using the example of a consolidation from VORELLE to DETAB.

All sources containing VORELLE table definitions are automatically analysed and evaluated with regard to the functionality actually used. For each function category it is examined how it can be replaced and solution variants are suggested, e.g:

• The code can be transformed 1:1 into the syntax of another decision table generator.
• The code can automatically be transformed into well maintainable, native source code.
• And other solution variants ...

For the automated transformation, Delta uses its proven AMELIO Modernization Platform.

And by the Way …

Our analysis tools can also enable you to do it the other way round: You can analyse complex native source code and have the contained decision logic automatically converted into clearly arranged decision tables (Delta DETAB). This helps with modernisation projects, facilitates the exchange with business departments and serves the knowledge transfer.

Find the Perfect Solution

Would you like to …

… facilitate the maintenance of your applications?
… secure the knowledge about your applications and pass on the know-how to the application heirs?
… consolidate or replace third-party products?

Our tailor-made assessment reliably identifies and evaluates the critical points and challenges for your project. This enables you to find a solution that perfectly matches your specific application and tool landscape. Of course, we can also support you in planning the on-time and on-budget implementation of your project.

Reach out and talk to us today. We are looking forward to working with you to develop the perfect solution for you.

Decision Table Generator Delta DETAB on Eclipse

Delta DETAB now available stand-alone for the development on Eclipse

Decision tables are an excellent method to describe complex issues in an easily understandable way. Delta DETAB accelerates and simplifies the software development through the automated, generative implementation of decision tables in COBOL and PL/I.

As a component of the development system Delta ADS, Delta DETAB is already available on Eclipse for some time. Now we provide Delta DETAB also stand-alone integrated in Eclipse.

Thus, the advantages of the modern development environment Eclipse can now also be used for DETAB standalone and the use of the decision table technology can seamlessly be integrated into current processes.

Further information about Delta DETAB

Our customers successfully use Delta DETAB to easily specify and to efficiently implement complex decision logic, to simplify the communication with business departments and to reduce development and maintenance costs.

Here you can find more information about Delta DETAB.

Get to know the benefits of DETAB on Eclipse

We would like to introduce you to DETAB on Eclipse. Get in touch with us and benefit from the advantages of DETAB on Eclipse.

Support Information: New Product Versions Available

Updating the development tools often collides with the project work. Why change something that works? But there are good reasons to update to the current versions:

• Old product versions cause higher costs.
• New features accelerate the development.
• Error corrections avoid workarounds that make the next update more difficult.

You do not know how much your individual installations differ from the standard products and how to determine dependencies and efforts? We help you to update to the current product versions quickly and easily.

We have released new products and new versions of the following products:

• Delta ADS for PL/I (5.2)
• ADS on Visual Studio (1.1.0)
• New: Delta DETAB on Eclipse

You can find more information about new features and fixes in the release notes at the support area of our website.

Get information and updates right now. You’ll find the list of our current product versions here.

Next Training Courses starts in November

Anyone using tools to automate software development needs in-depth knowledge of the methods, modes of operation, and capabilities of the tools. And not just "in principle", but in relation to the concrete environment and task.

Our training courses and workshops help you to use Delta tools efficiently and to optimise the development of your applications: practice-oriented, taking into account your main focus.

ADS Basics - ADS for Administrators - ADS Refresher - ADS on Eclipse - ADS What's new

Here are the new training schedules for the second half of 2018:

• 06.-08.11.2018 - ADS Basics
• 13.-15.11.2018 - ADS for Administrators
• 20.-21.11.2018 - ADS Refresher
• 27.-28.11.2018 - ADS on Eclipse
• 04.12.2018 - ADS What’s new

Learn more about our trainings and workshops ...

Contact us to discuss your requirements for a customised training.

Insurer Makes Important Core Application Fit for the Future

A large insurer has renovated a key component of his core application with the solutions from Delta Software Technology (Delta). Delta's AMELIO-Tools for automated analyses, code clean-up and re-documentation ensure a future-proof application infrastructure and an easy know-how transfer to the application heirs.

In the 1980s the insurer's IT developed a COBOL application for the screen control. Until now this forms an important part of the application infrastructure. Since its initial development this part of the application and the entire application have evolved: Extensions have been added over and over again. The screen control has been maintained by several generations of developers. Different programming styles and COBOL versions have been used for the further development. Moreover, the screen control has been optimized according to former criteria. These criteria are no longer applicable. However, over time all of these measures have greatly affected understandability and maintainability.

The screen control has proven itself over the years. For this reason, it was decided to make this part of the established and reliable application fit for the future to preserve the proven application logic and to ensure the investments effected. The improvement of the application should be carried out safely and with as less effort as possible.

Fit for the future

For making the application fit, the following measures should be implemented:

• Clean-up and upgrade (refactoring) of the source code, so that it will be understandable and maintainable again and that changes and extensions can be implemented efficiently.
• Creating a technical documentation to better understand what the application does and how it works.
• Knowledge transfer about the application and its functionality to new developers.

A manual implementation of the measures would have been risky and inefficient:

• Efforts and risks could not be estimated.
• The daily business would have been disturbed due to a strong resource commitment.
• Massive testing efforts, to ensure the correctness of the changes.

The insurer has chosen the automated solution with Delta’s tools and was able to avoid the problems of a manual approach.

Usage of the Delta AMELIO family

To solve the task, Delta suggested a multi-level approach with the following elements:

• Code clean-up
• Replacement of VORELLE
• In-depth source analyses
• Refactoring
• Re-documentation
• Workshops for the knowledge transfer

Analysis and clean-up of the sources

During the first step, the AMELIO toolset was configured regarding the customer-specific programming styles, name conventions, etc. General clean-ups, like the removal of redundant code and the standardisation of syntax variants, were implemented by using the AMELIO CleanUp-Factory.

The analysis with AMELIO Logic Discovery identified what the application does and how it works. From these analysis results Delta derived suggestions for a tailor-made refactoring. These suggestions, as well as other requirements of the customer, were evaluated and coordinated in close cooperation to build the customer-specific factory.
With this tailor-made solution the refactoring was performed in an audit-proof way.

Workshop for the knowledge transfer

The results of the analyses and the refactoring were presented in a workshop and thus new employees were trained to work with the implementation of the screen control. Further possible improvements of the application were defined. The employees benefitted from the functionality of AMELIO Logic Discovery when implementing these improvements. They gained deep insight in the sources and were able to build their know-how about the application.

Final analysis and re-documentation

Finally, these sources were analysed again by AMELIO Logic Discovery and a documentation of the entire application was created automatically. With the help of this documentation and the interactive presentation in AMELIO Logic Discovery, first maintenance cases have been implemented quick and efficiently.

Highlights and benefits of the Delta solution

The clean-up and refactoring were performed by a factory specifically configured for this purpose:

• Automated - The changes were implemented automatically and without manual interventions. The strict process ensured that the results are always comprehensible and reproducible. In this way, efforts and risks of the project have been minimized.
• Audit-proof - All changes to the code have been documented automatically. The complete automation and the change log provide security for internal and external auditors.
• Tailor-made - The necessary code changes were agreed with the customer and adapted to his requirements and company policies.
• Documented - A documentation of the application was created automatically.
• Knowledge Building - The knowledge about the application and its functioning was regained.
• Without footprints, without vendor lock-in - No additional runtime components or new products have to be installed or licensed. In addition, third-party tools, such as the decision table generator VORELLE, could been removed.
• Short freeze phase - The development and maintenance of the application could be continued in parallel without hindrance.
• Minimal test effort - Using Meta-level testing, not all changed programs had to be tested, but only the change rules using a small test set.

Goal achieved …

The customer has managed to make his application fit for the future with little effort and low risk. With the gained experience it is now possible to decide how to make further (complex) applications fit for the future, while reusing the factory.

When will you make this step?

You have COBOL, PL/I or Delta ADS applications that have proven themselves and you want to make sure they are fit for the future?

Get in touch with us and find out what is possible with an automated approach.

Bedag Relies on Delta ADS on Visual Studio

Same Development Environment for Different Programming Languages

The Bedag Informatik AG modernises its development environment and combines the development in C# and Delta ADS in a .NET framework under Microsoft Visual Studio.

A uniform process control and development environment for the different programming languages is the goal of many enterprises. Bedag Informatik AG (Bedag) has mastered this step, it unifies its development processes and thus ensures a more efficient and future-proof application development.

(Further) Development of Viacar

Bedag develops and maintains the Viacar application with the solutions from Delta Software Technology GmbH (Delta) for many years. Many business cases as well as different canton-specific requirements were developed and generated Viacar-wide with Delta ADS.

New parts of the application are developed in C# for .NET by using Microsoft Visual Studio. In order to avoid unnecessarily different processes and development environments, Bedag had the requirement to standardise its development of C# and Delta COBOL in one development environment.

Introduction of Delta ADS on Visual Studio

For this purpose Delta provided the plugin "Delta ADS on Visual Studio". After a successful test, Bedag opted for the use of the Delta ADS plugin under Visual Studio. Delta ADS programs can now be maintained directly in Visual Studio and the corresponding COBOL code is generated. In this way, control processes could be unified and coordinated.

By using a unique development environment as well as the seamless integration of the Delta ADS plugin, Bedag's developers do not have to switch between the development environments anymore. The provision of this uniform and modern user interface allows the efficient and future-proof development of the application.

About Bedag Informatik AG

With a revenue of more than CHF 100 million, Bedag is a leading Swiss IT service provider. Its 400 staff, including 27 trainees, ensure broad and sound IT expertise. Bedag’s core business is the development, maintenance and running of critical business IT solutions, and the company thereby guarantees economical and problem-free IT operations for its customers. Bedag has a strong regional presence, with a network of highly secure data centers, as well as sites in Berne, Aarau, Delémont, Geneva, Lausanne and Wettingen. Its customers are mainly public authorities and organisations, companies in the health and insurance sectors and UN organisations. Bedag was founded in 1990 and is owned by the Canton of Berne.

Viacar: The application for the Swiss Traffic Office

Viacar is a software system for traffic offices and is currently used by the six cantons Aargau, Luzern, Schaffhausen, Waadt, Zug and Zürich. The cantons manage therewith about 900 users and approx. 2.5 million vehicles and ships. At the Aarau location, Bedag and its team ensure the maintenance and further development of Viacar.

Go the way, too

If you want to standardise your development environment and processes under Visual Studio, we provide a trial version of the Delta ADS plugin.

If you don’t use Visual Studio, we also provide plugins for Eclipse as well as for IBM RDz, Micro Focus EDz, Compuware Topaz and other Eclipse-based development environments.
We would like to discuss with you the possibilities to optimize your development with Delta ADS.

Please get in touch with us.

Computerwoche: IT Legacy – Dusty but Valuable

Legacy Modernisation Challenges IT Managers

Start-ups are lucky: They can build new systems without taking account of existing ones. But, some day a successful start-up will become a company with a grown IT structure. On invitation of the COMPUTERWOCHE, IDG’s weekly IT magazine in Germany, modernisation experts from seven companies discussed which problems can be solved and how.

The Roundtable

Dr. Daniela Schilling (CEO, Delta Software Technology) discussed in this round with representatives of Software AG, Deloitte Consulting, CA Germany, innoQ Germany, Capgemini and ConSol Software.

Read the complete online article from Karin Quack published in COMPUTERWOCHE from April 11, 2018:
https://www.computerwoche.de/a/legacy-modernisierung-fordert-it-manager-heraus,3544668

Go the Way With Delta Software Technology

We would be happy to discuss with you the different possibilities for modernisation. Just get in touch with us. Together we make your software future-proof.

This article was published in German by Karin Quack in the COMPUTERWOCHE in Germany on April 11, 2018 under the title “IT-Legacy – angestaubt, aber wertvoll: Legacy-Modernisierung fordert IT-Manager heraus“ and translated into English by Delta Software Technology.
The original article, as well as further links, can be found here.

GI-Workshop: Software-Reengineering & Evolution

The 20th workshop “Software Reengineering & Evolution” of the GI section Software Reengineering (SRE) took place this year from 02 - 04 May 2018. (GI – Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. is a German Society for Computer Science).

GI: 20th Workshop Software Reengineering & Evolution
02 - 04 May 2018, Bad Honnef, Germany

Delta Software Technology was represented there with two contributions:

• Live Demo: AMELIO Logic Discovery - "Do You Understand Your Software?"
  • Here you will find the presentation ...

• Presentation: Modernising Legacy Applications - "Everything New in Spring?"
  • Here you will find the presentation ...

Our speaker

Dr. Daniela Schilling
Dr. Daniela Schilling is Managing Director of Delta Software Technology.

Further Information

Further information on the event can be found here:
http://fg-sre.gi.de/wsre2018

You couldn't attend? Then contact us, we would be happy to meet you for a personal discussion.

New ADS Training Courses

Anyone using tools to automate software development needs in-depth knowledge of the methods, modes of operation, and capabilities of the tools. And not just "in principle", but in relation to the concrete environment and task.

Our training courses and workshops help you to use Delta tools efficiently and to optimise the development of your applications: practice-oriented, taking into account your main focus.

ADS Basics - ADS for Administrators - ADS Refresher - ADS on Eclipse - ADS What's new

Here are the new training schedules for the first half of 2018:

• 15.-17.05.2018 - ADS Basics
• 05.-07.06.2018 - ADS for Administrators
• 12.-13.06.2018 - ADS Refresher
• 19.-20.06.2018 - ADS on Eclipse
• 26.06.2018 - ADS What’s new

Learn more about our trainings and workshops ...

Don’t guess – Assess

Tailor-made application assessments enable you to pinpoint and to reliably evaluate all critical issues for your projects. They help you to accomplish your projects in the areas of modernisation, migration, mass changes and clean-up of your COBOL and PL/I applications successfully in time and in budget.

Do you want to change or modernize your COBOL or PL/I applications, to consolidate your IT landscape or to replace technologies? Do you want to make well-founded and reliable decisions for large change projects?

For more than 40 years, we are experts in the analysis and the modernisation of large and complex IT applications. Benefit from our decades of experience.

Our Service for You: Tailor-made Application Assessment

With our targeted analysis and a tailor-made assessment of your applications, we help you to reliably plan your projects and reduce the risks and costs of your project. For:

• Secure choice of the project strategy
• Realistic scheduling
• Reliable cost calculation
• Secure planning and implementation project
• Well-grounded selection of a suitable test strategy
• Comparison of technical alternatives
• Audit-proven realisation of the project

Icons designed by Freepik from Flaticon.com

Spring-cleaning for Your COBOL and PL/I Applications

The spring meeting 2018 of the working group “SOSXD zOS/390 (MVS)” took place on March 14th-16th 2018 in Kassel, Germany. The subject of this working group was the base operating system (z/OS) of the IBM mainframe including the system-related software. Further information about the working group can be found here.

On March 14th, Dr. Daniela Schilling (CEO, Delta Software Technology) and Hans Nickessen (Senior Consultant) presented a lecture on “AMELIO: Spring-clean your COBOL- and PL/I Applications – Make your Applications fit for the Future” (‘Application Management’ in the agenda).

COBOL and PL/I applications form the backbone of the IT landscape in many companies until now. These applications are 30-40 years old and have proven themselves during this period. But within this time the applications were alive. They got continuously enhanced and forced to be adapted to changing environments and new requirements more quickly. That’s why in many companies the question arises how these long time investments can be secured and how to avoid that the legacy applications will become a cost-intensive brake pad.

In our presentation we showed you how …

• the knowledge about the applications can be regained and transferred to new generations of developers
• the applications can get rid of dispensable ballast
• the applications can be modernized or technologies can be changed

to make them fit again for the future. And all this 100% automated and with no effect on running operations and regular maintenance.

Further information about the event can be found here.

You couldn't participate? Please contact us. We would like to talk to you in a personal discussion.

Further information about AMELIO can be found here.

Presentation documents

The lecture "AMELIO: Spring-clean your COBOL- and PL/I Applications" can now be found on SlideShare ...

GSE Working Groups

The Guide Share Europe (GSE) is a non-profit association of companies, organisations and individuals who are involved in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions based on IBM architectures. GSE is an effective forum supporting the needs of today's ICT professionals.

For more information on GSE please visit www.gse.org

New ADS (Refresher) Training Courses

Anyone using tools to automate software development needs in-depth knowledge of the methods, modes of operation, and capabilities of the tools. And not just "in principle", but in relation to the concrete environment and task.

Our training courses and workshops help you to use Delta tools efficiently and to optimise the development of your applications: practice-oriented, taking into account your main focus.

ADS Basics - ADS for Administrators - ADS Refresher - ADS on Eclipse - ADS What's new

Here are the new training schedules for the first half of 2018:

• 15.-17.05.2018 - ADS Basics
• 05.-07.06.2018 - ADS for Administrators
• 12.-13.06.2018 - ADS Refresher
• 19.-20.06.2018 - ADS on Eclipse
• 26.06.2018 - ADS What’s new

Learn more about our trainings and workshops ...

Current Product Versions – Plan Your Updates now!

Updating the development tools often collides with the project work. Why change something that works? But there are good reasons to update to the current versions:

• Old product versions cause higher costs.
• New features accelerate the development.
• Error corrections avoid workarounds that make the next update more difficult.

You do not know how much your individual installations differ from the standard products and how to determine dependencies and efforts? We help you to update to the current product versions quickly and easily.

We have released new products and new versions of the following products:

• Delta ADS 6.2.0
• New: Delta ADS 6 for UNIX
• ADS on Eclipse 6.8.1
• License Management 2.6
• AMELIO Logic Discovery 1.5.0
• New: AMELIO CleanUp-Factory

You can find more information about new features and fixes in the release notes at the support area of our website.

Get information and updates right now. You’ll find the list of our current product versions here.

ADS 6 Now Available on Unix Systems

With Delta ADS, you are developing your enterprise back-end applications platform-independently in order to subsequently generate them in COBOL and/or PL/I for a specific target platform. To this end, you are using Microsoft Windows, Unix or mainframe systems as development environments.

Delta ADS 6 now offers you new functions and language extensions to help you to evolve and maintain your applications even more efficiently.

After we made ADS 6 available for development environments on Microsoft Windows platforms, we now provide ADS 6 also for the development on Unix platforms.

ADS Development on Unix Systems

This new Version of ADS 6 is available for IBM AIX and diverse other Linux and Unix systems. It is suitable for all customers who

• Develop on Unix systems for one or more Unix systems as target platform (generation on Unix for Unix)
• Develop on Unix systems for one or more mainframe systems as target platform (cross-generation on Unix for mainframe)
• Want to relocate their application development from mainframe systems to Unix systems, regardless of the production environments where the applications are executed.

Get to Know the New ADS 6 on Unix Now

We would like to introduce the new ADS 6 on Unix to you and to help you optimise your development with Delta ADS. Get to know ADS 6 on Unix now.

Delta ADS 6

You will find further information about the advantages of ADS 6 here.

„The new ADS 6 enables us to further improve the efficiency and quality of our software development and maintenance. For example, new functions for the detailed documentation and description of the generating process help us to securely and fast perform changes and enhancements on our large scale and complex applications."
Oswald Klackl; B+S Banksysteme; Head of Architecture & Quality Management

Data Structures: All at a Glance

AMELIO Logic Discovery provides comprehensive in-depth data structure analyses for COBOL, PL/I and Delta ADS applications. With the new representation of the analysis results, the complete knowledge about your data structures, their declaration, usage, and dependencies is available directly at a glance.AMELIO Logic Discovery provides comprehensive in-depth data structure analyses for COBOL, PL/I and Delta ADS applications. With the new representation of the analysis results, the complete knowledge about your data structures, their declaration, usage, and dependencies is available directly at a glance.

The Problem with Data Structures

To understand an application, it is essential to understand its data structures. But, in applications that have been implemented using procedural languages like COBOL or PL/I, either native or generative, the declarations, usage and dependencies are spread over the entire code or even are only implicit.

In order to facilitate the understanding of these applications, AMELIO Logic Discovery offers comprehensive data structure analyses.

New Release of AMELIO Logic Discovery

With the new release of AMELIO Logic Discovery, all you want to know about the data structures of your applications is available at a glance. Thus, you understand your applications even faster.

See for yourself! Learn more about, how AMELIO Logic Discovery can help you to better understand your data structures.

New (Refresher) Training Courses

Anyone using tools to automate software development needs in-depth knowledge of the methods, modes of operation, and capabilities of the tools. And not just "in principle", but in relation to the concrete environment and task.

Our training courses and workshops help you to use Delta tools efficiently and to optimise the development of your applications: practice-oriented, taking into account your main focus.

ADS Basics - ADS for Administrators - ADS Refresher - ADS on Eclipse - ADS What's new

Here are the new training schedules for the first half of 2018:

• 15.-17.05.2018 - ADS Basics
• 05.-07.06.2018 - ADS for Administrators
• 12.-13.06.2018 - ADS Refresher
• 19.-20.06.2018 - ADS on Eclipse
• 26.06.2018 - ADS What’s new

Learn more about our trainings and workshops ...