TMD Friction GmbH / Siemens Business Services Management

The Migration of a Natural application from ADABAS C to Oracle 9i is the basis of modern software development

The Situation:

With over 4,700 employees, the TMD Friction GmbH is one of the world’s largest manufacturers
of brake pads. In the product development department, chemists work with an application
called “E-database,” which stores all information on the development of TMD brake pads. Based
on ADABAS C and Natural, the application was developed under OpenVMS over a period of
more than 15 years and has been served by Siemens Business Services since 1996.
After TMD merged with another major brake pad manufacturer, the internal database systems for product development had to be consolidated. At the same time, data for product optimization had to be analyzable via a KI system.

The Solution:

With SmartDCI®, the “E-database” was smoothly migrated to the new Oracle database within
four months. No changes in the application were necessary. Even communication between
OpenVMS (Natural) and Windows NT (Oracle) was mastered with high performance. Flexible
mapping to a fully relational data model and the introduction of the KI system both contributed
to the project’s impressive success. Through a combination of proprietary development and
the KI system for further optimization of product development, TMD’s competitive edge was
strengthened even more..

The Benefits:

• Maximum investment protection of existing applications
  
• Simultaneous consolidation of databases inthe desired target environment
  
• Database port for external tools and the data for additional applications (KI system)
  
• Protocols from SmartDCI®’s dynamic SQL engine provide optimal support of the development of new functions

The Customer:

“With the new solution based on an Oracle database, our chemists have a much better
overview of the entire dataset, and now we can easily modernize existing Natural applications.”

Dr. Claus Flaßbeck
Project Manager at TMD Friction GmbH

TMD Friction GmbH
Leverkusen, Germany
www.tmdfriction.com

Industry: Automotive
Employees: > 4700