Legacy applications that have existed for decades contain important technical components that have been developed and changed through the years to provide the required business functionality.
When considering modernization, organizations need to conduct a comprehensive assessment to map the applications and reveal all their components, to provide important information that will impact the organization's decisions.
Using its propriety tool OnTarget, MOST Technologies will conduct the assessment to provide the requisite information and qualified recommendations including a complete set of inventory reports, project cost and schedule regarding the modernization project.
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OnTarget solutions suite - is an essential assessment tool that parses the legacy applications and provides an interactive cross reference reports of all the applications inventory including database structure, programming entities, utilities, etc. OnTarget creates a full breakdown tree of the applications’ components and pinpoints missing or unused components. It also provides a comprehensive statistic of the applications, thus allowing customers to have a full visibility and understanding of the applications to be modernized.
Solutions
Assessment
Why MOST
MOST combines technology and highly experienced mainframe and open systems architects to successfully analyze legacy applications and to assess the best modernization option for our customers.
MOST Technologies has successfully performed detailed assessments with multiple customers for over two decades.
What We Offer
MOST Technologies offers an assessment project/phase to evaluate the best approach for modernizing the legacy applications.
The assessment is done by MOST’s best qualified and experienced technical architects. MOST’s propriety tool, OnTarget, is used to assist the team during the assessment.
While running the project many reports are generated (details can be found below), but the main deliverables of the assessment are detailed project plan, project scope and cost.
To achieve the above deliverables the assessment typically covers four different categories:
Refactoring or replatforming
Using OnTarget (see more details below), MOST will analyze the code and provide various reports to define the scope, identify various application components and measure the effort required to convert the code to the target language/s, or to replatform it to another environment, as defined by the customer. The reports will also highlight whether tool customization will be required as MOST’s approach is to perform a full automated refactoring / replatforming.
Architecture and technological mapping
A complete study of various components such as interfaces, languages, products, and utilities will be done. These components will be mapped into the target environment.
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Example of components to consider are:
Database/File migration
OnTarget will be used to map the legacy files and databases to be migrated. Cross reference reports between the files/databases and application code will be generated. For data migration process please refer to the data migration page.
Migrating VSAM files is often a complex issue requiring in depth assessment. OnTarget provides reports that map the relevant VSAM record layouts with the fields and cross reference them with the modules that use the record layouts. Thus OnTarget enables the project team to determine the best approach regarding the migration strategy.
Project management
Project management category covers the plan to perform the entire modernization project based on MOST’s project methodology. For more information please refer to the project methodology page.
MOST will address the following management related topics:
Using OnTarget during the Assessment
In support of the above, our OnTarget proprietary tools will analyze the entire code base and will provide a set of HTML interactive statistics and scoping reports. These reports can also be saved in Excel format. The reports enable interactive examination of conversion elements via drill down functionality. This provides a user-friendly cross reference tool between the different elements of the system.
The tool interactively displays cross-reference for various types of components such as:
The examples shown below are for COBOL, similar reports will be provided for other technologies such as Natural.
The following figure shows a sample of the output of the analysis tools:
The table in the upper left shows the number of COBOL programs, BMS maps, etc., as well as the lines of code for each item. The lower table shows a cross reference for each program, detailing the subroutines called, copy books used, CICS calls, etc.
As shown in the figure below, it is particularly useful during the assessment phase to have a list of missing components such as missing subroutines.
