MCP in a Modern Integrated Environment (UN 4015 D) Tim Schulz Enterprise Architect

Transcription

1 MCP in a Modern Integrated Environment (UN 4015 D) Tim Schulz Enterprise Architect

2 Agenda: CoreLink Development Struggles Data Integration 2

3 The Setting CoreLink Administrative Solutions Spin off company from Blue Cross Blue Shield North Dakota / Noridian Mutual Insurance 1/1/2009 is the date of organization Actually we are: A Software Development company Similar to what used to be considered a service bureau, in that one system supporting multiple customers Some aspects of a modern Software as a Service (SaaS) model Provide solutions for core processing to Blue plans in: North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska 300 employees 3

4 The Setting Code base 15+ millions lines of code in total 13+ million lines for Unisys platform 6,500+ programs 6,800+ copybooks / copy-libs Architecting future will use modern tools (Cobol, WorkFlow, Algol) SQL Server Reporting Services in place of Cobol based data collection and formatting Migrating toward a true SOA based Application model 5

5 Development Struggles 8/25/20136

6 The Problem - Development Struggles Locking Source Control model PVCS system with heavy customization Weak release process Very manual and file by file, with minimal controls Newer developers without Unisys experience Struggling with CANDE and UI of Programmer s Work Bench Out of date system documentation Home built, green screen based, cryptic Newer developers struggled to learn code base Missing Transparency and Traceability from project to code to release Based only on comments Lower than optimal quality for our customers 7

7 The Solution Integrating of MCP Development into a modern set of tools that supports: Application Lifecycle Management tooling with clear traceability and transparency of project, changes and testing Great analysis of code-base tooling UML based system documentation from design to production support Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to better match modern developers Source control model able to be leveraged to drive quality through stronger release portion of life cycle Non-Locking multi-threaded concurrent source control model 8

8 The Solution 9

9 The Solution Micro Focus Implementation of this started in 2011 (actually in 2002) 2011 was our 4 th attempt to implement: Relativity -- > Modernization Workbench Enterprise Analyzer Challenges: It is designed at its core to support IBM Cobol so we: Convert filenames from Unisys format to more IBM dot notation Need extensions to support change attribute statements Need extension to support library linkage that does not use Communication section Needed tweaks to support COMS configuration file Understanding and implementing integration to source control with a very loose SDLC Benefits: Critical to understand code interdependencies as we spun off and went through a code separation Critical for newer staff to be able to understand scope of change Excellent to help understand program flow Code base is in MS SQL so you can mine it and to support low level integration with other tools 10

10 The Solution 11

11 The Solution - Sparx 12 Implementation of this started in 2011 Original intent was stand alone documentation repository Challenges: Understanding UML and applying it consistently to Unisys space Loading 13,000+ items into the tool Manual did not work Keeping current with code-base Mitigation Learned how to export from Micro-Focus and import Start of automated balancing between EA and MF Eventually ended with meta data update in MF based on EA Benefits: Allows drill in view of code-base from domain Sub-domain Grouping Component Details Blends Unisys with non-unisys code base Supports basis for message flow diagrams Supports reporting of component by physical platform Support overlay of Business process diagrams on top of logical view of code which can overlay the physical code components

12 The Solution 13

13 The Solution Micro Focus / Sparx What came next is really a chicken or egg scenario: We needed new source control and were leaning toward SVN since we had it in house. But we had no direct implementation plans. Asked to take a couple hours to look at TFS versus SVN. Found out about the Team Explorer Everywhere plug-in and things started to align. We could use MCP IDE for Eclipse add the TEE plug-in and we might have a solution. In under 6 hours from take a look at TFS to Proof!!! Cobol added to TFS, imported to MCP IDE, made code change, compiled on MCP, executed object, check change back to TFS. And could repeat On to implementation since TFS would give us ALM and was aligned with our Microsoft first Architectural Vision tenant. 14

14 The Solution 15

15 The Solution Web Enabler Needed to replace NxView Challenges: Which emulator to choose How does emulator fit in future technology vision Still have 1,600+ green screens for end user interface Mitigation Settled on Unisys as vendor: keep vendor list down Integrated with MCP IDE for Eclipse although not optimal integration pattern Wrote extension to migrate and manage macros Benefits: Web Enabler allows a technical migration path, stand-alone initially to can embed in browser later Allows easy capture of macros by custom extensions 16

16 The Solution 17

17 The Solution MCP IDE and TFS Eclipse Framework for plug-ins MCP IDE for Eclipse Unisys development support Team Explorer Everywhere Full MS TFS support CoreLink Plug-in Start of custom functionality 18

18 The Solution MCP IDE and TFS Challenges: Initial quality issue with plug-ins but definitely getting there now Stood Main-Framers on their head Took lot of planning branch and project structure and simple understanding how. Mitigation Partnered with Unisys and Microsoft Unisys has really stepped up to help us through this Benefits: Staff are getting faster with good tooling Development is starting to be more collaborative New staff is more comfortable with IDE IDE is being baked into our processes through using rest of TFS as ALM solution 19

19 The Roll-out Ran a Pilot group of 20 staff and 10 percent of code base for roughly 6 months Full roll-out consisted of: 110 staff to be trained on all of the new tool Migration over roughly 13 million lines of code - including a re-organization of code to MCP IDE Projects. Our projects contain from 300 to 1,800 files. Had to keep the lights on during the migration and training Time span was 4 weeks or less. Training: 6 full days of training Courses were built starting generic tools, progressing to theories of use, concluding with 2 days of simulation of the new day in the life Ran 2 cycles of training, each having 3 class groups that concurrently went through courses All was fine except for tight schedules in Fargo, ND during the winter 2 blizzards which actually closed the build Lesson learned: pilot should be representative of real life not just in numbers of code lines.

20 Adoption Less than stellar Change is hard Quality issues give a foot hold for the negative Must have buy-in from leadership as the right direction 21

21 Future tasks Rework deployment to support Continuous Integration Concept of check-in to branch ending in a deployment to environment with possibility to trigger automated testing Extract, compile, deploy, test, report status Promotion for release Object code created as part of CI for Main / QA will be promoted with code to production No recompile at each promotional level (QA, regression, UAT, PROD) Integration with Microsoft Test Professional MCP Centric test cases / plans Coded UI framework to drive MCP Screens and Processes Use of SQL Explorer plug-in Access DMSii via JDBC drivers DBE replication of data from DMSii to MS SQL near real-time Use of SQL Explorer to validate test results, etc. 22

22 8/25/ Data Integration

23 The Problem - Data Integration Most of data locked up in the DMSii database Some data in non-dmsii mechanisms DMSii does not support relational items such as joins, referential integrity, etc. Development is coding low level data access Business needs requiring to have database access 24/7 Cost effectiveness lets face it MIPS are expensive 24

24 Solution - Our Data Replication Project Normalized Transactional Data Store External Data Sources Iterative Process Moving From Non-Normalized to Normalized Master Data Management Includes the Sum of Both Data Stores MASTER DATA Reporting Repository Multidimensional Analysis Non-Normalized Transactional Data Store Master Data Management and Data Quality Services 25 DMSii DATABridge

25 Current State DBE is replicating our 600+ data structures from DMSii MS SQL since May We have some structures with DBE doing multidirectional replication two copies of MS SQL from one DMSii / DBE source Starting to pilot MS SQL replication for use to protect source databases and performance associated. Starting near real-time replication / normalization of our database schema Piloting transition of DMSii / Cobol based reporting to MS SQL / SSRS / SharePoint 26

26 Future State Implement data profiling and cleansing processes Complete near real-time normalization replication of data that has its source in DMSii Continue transition of reporting to better state of the art solution Start to transition external data inquiry to be services based sourced from MS SQL versus DMSii Looking forward to some Proof of Concepts on integrating either services or direct MS SQL into MCP processing. 27

27 Questions / Discussion 8/25/