For the development of their product family System IRD, logica E&U Solutions GmbH relies on the SCOUT² Development Platform provided by Delta Software Technology. SCOUT² optimises the development and maintenance of software for heterogeneous systems and integrates the various development environments.
The software house logica E&U Solutions GmbH, headquartered in Mannheim and a member of international Logica Group, is the producer of the product family System IRD, a standard software for energy supply industry and telecommunications. The product IRD Billing Factory for the account area is nowadays available for various mainframe platforms. In order to guarantee the required portability of the software, logica E&U Solutions GmbH employed the generator tools Delta ADS for COBOL & PL/I of Delta Software Technology. Presently, the software is maintained and further developed on different system platforms.
- Central working environment for the logica E&U Solutions GmbH application developers is the BS2000/OSD by Fujitsu Siemens computers.
- The system related components of the individual product versions for MVS, BS2000, VSE and UNIX are being developed on the respective platforms.
The provision of the IRD Billing Factory for the UNIX systems as well, additionally requires a corresponding development environment on UNIX in order to process all necessary system-specific adaptations and porting.
logica E&U Solutions GmbH perfected the efficient and interlocked work with development environments on various operating platforms over years and created a tailor-made environment that is adapted to its individual requirements in an optimised manner.
Rightsizing of the Development Environment
logica E&U Solutions GmbH was looking for an option to replace its work-and generation environments that were distributed on various system platforms, by a uniform and PC supported environment running under Windows/NT.
The following requirements had to be met:
- Successive transfer of the existing development and maintenance environments from BS2000, MVS and VSE to Windows/NT
- Integration of the employed Delta ADS target generations for
- BS2000/ODS with openUTM, resp. EntireX of SAG
- OS/390 (MVS) with CICS/ESA resp. EntireX
- VSE/ESA with CICS/ESA resp. EntireX
- as well as the new UNIX platforms with EntireX
under one user surface. - Creation of a likewise integrated development- and generation basis for the new UNIX platforms
- Partial replacement of the existing workflows running on the system platforms BS200, MVS and VSE by centrally controlled processes.
logica E&U Solutions GmbH decided for the usage the SCOUT² Development Platform, provided by Delta Software Technology.
Reasons for the Usage of the SCOUT² Development Platform
The subsequently expounded reasons were, amongst others, crucial factors for logica E&U Solutions GmbH to integrate the development environments with SCOUT²:
- A Uniform User Surface
Individual configurable project and user views ensure a continuous overview of the entire development processes and development components. Independent of the respective target platform the developers are enabled to work with one uniform development environment. Scripts realise the system-specific processes transparently.
- Handling most different Object Types
Beside the different Delta object types, also Java-, C-, Assembler modules and the like can be administrated and maintained in a SCOUT² working environment. Already existing and approved tools can be integrated seamlessly.
- Integration of Existing Distributed Environments
Sources for the different target platforms can be processed on the PC comfortably. Host specific processes such as compile and link can be initialised centrally and transparently from the individual SCOUT² workstations. Result lists of such host processes will be assigned to the respective workstations automatically and, as well, being displayed in the project window of SCOUT². Due to the clear and hierarchical presentation of dependencies, the developers will realise processes and their sequence processes, results and objects resulting from it at a glance.
- Scalability and Extensibility
Existing workflows running on mainframes can be integrated into the SCOUT² environment successively or being replaced by PC specific workflows. The working environment can become extended with low expenditure in order to meet the particular requirements that are arising with the new UNIX product platforms.
- Central Configuration and Administration
Alterations or extensions of the SCOUT² workstation installations do not have to be modified for each local developer workstation because using SCOUT², global configurations (e.g. for program executions, resp. the mapping between physical file structures and logical views) will be defined for all users centrally and only once.
First Results
logica E&U Solutions GmbH verified the functionality of SCOUT² in a test project in spring 2000. The specified goals were reached, in particular the requests, logica E&U Solutions GmbH pointed out for the cooperation between SCOUT² and the ADS target generations for BS2000/UTM and MVS/CICS. Since December 2000, the system group of logica E&U Solutions GmbH uses SCOUT². Hereby, the integrating abilities of SCOUT² are particularly relevant because until then the employees had to switch between different target platforms for their system related work with SCOUT², all sources that had to be processed on different platforms until the employment of SCOUT², are now available in one single environment.
logica E&U Solutions GmbH used the extensive configuration-abilities of SCOUT² in order to realise the project requirements in a successful manner:
- Additional administration tools (e.g. for the access on ORACLE-DB) were included
- Remote jobs (in particular compile and link) that are running on various host systems will be started by SCOUT² directly.
- Most different, historically grown processes were integrated.
- Numerous enterprise-specific processes were implemented.
After a short time of training, which was accompanied by Delta Software, logica E&U Solutions GmbH was able to manage extension in the SCOUT² configuration on its own.
logica E&U Solutions GmbH consistently transferred all sources (Delta, COBOL, C, Assembler etc.) to the NT network environment. There, all processes such as edit, generation or compile are initialised resp. executed by SCOUT². The remote access, mandatory for the host accesses, is being executed absolutely transparent for the users. Consequently, SCOUT² users don't have to change into the corresponding host environments in order to execute host-based processes. Results, deriving from host jobs such as compile lists, will be transferred into the SCOUT² environment automatically and, with it, will be available for all users to analyse them more intensively. A login on various platforms is only mandatory for runtime tests.
Successful Conclusion
Presently, SCOUT² administrates and provides approximately 20.000 different source objects for most different processes. Complex workflows have been implemented in no time. The consistent usage of SCOUT² led to an increase in productivity and a higher motivation for the software developers, as well.
After an initial hesitancy, even "inveterate" mainframe supporters are now having confidence in the abilities and functions of SCOUT² and the tools, integrated in it.
