The Problem

The development productivity of Natural is high and programs run stably, but Natural is not a standard and the selection of tools is therefore largely limited to SAG products. When it comes to license upgrades or negotiations about maintenance, there are no alternatives from competitors. Ultimately, many customers do not feel comfortable in such a marginal position of dependency on one certain vendor. Apart from this, the continual decline in the number of Natural developers represents a ticking time bomb for many customers.

The Solution

Migrating a complex application has to accommodate technical aspects (maintainability of target code, performance, open interfaces, etc.) as well as HR issues (effort needed for developers to adapt, integration in daily business, etc.). In view of this, here at PKS we favor the migration of Natural to EGL (Enterprise Generation Language) instead of native Java or Cobol. EGL is a business-oriented language from IBM which specifically meets the demands of migrating existing applications. Using automated tools, the existing application is broken down into its individual components. All of the components for specialized functionality are extracted and reassembled in a newly defined application architecture (such as MVC or SOA). Up to 80% of this procedure can be automated by using rule-based tools (reengineering). Via rule-based systems, application components that underlie less functional modifications can also be migrated up to 100% automatically to the desired new target environment.
Because this procedure can be broken down into any number of small steps, migration can be ideally integrated into day-to-day business operations.

Procedure

• Analysis of the application and rough draft of concept with initial cost estimate
• Through transition assessment, a detailed plan including all costs is drawn up for reengineering the application
• Through a prototype (proof of concept), the procedure is checked in a small part of
  the application
• Execution of reengineering project with customer involvement

Migrating Natural: Overview of Project Progress