|
|
|
Software Translation Tool
As a technology provider, academic research and development is an essential part of APG’s ongoing efforts being a top
level IT company. The cooperation with academic institutions contributes to the state-of-the-art skill and technology
delivery of APG.
APG’s current awarded model transformation technology ModelCVS*) enhances among others the functionality of CA Gen.
Using APG’s ModelCVS technology customers may easily modernize their Gen models, can make additional generations from their
existing CA Gen models like SWT front ends for their GUI C/S applications. On the other hand they can convert software systems
written in COBOL or PL/1 easily into CA Gen models. At the same time using ModelCVS, any additional documentation like UML
diagrams can be generated from CA Gen models. Any kind of QS check and correction, impact analysis for release changes
or automatic generations of test modules, code changes as part of a development cycle can be accomplished easily using the
ModelCVS technology. ModelCVS fills the gaps and complements CA Gen technology in the modeling layer and in additional
generations layer in an optimal way.
If you want to read about the outcomes of this period, follow our user group
'Software Modernization and Modelbased Software Development' (SOMOMOSODE) in the social networking
platform XING
(membership is free). At the same time we are also in twitter.
There you can follow our activities under
|
|
Three APG sessions at EDGE:
|
|
|
*) This work has been awarded and partly funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport,
Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) under Grant FIT-IT-810806.
|
| |
Model Transformation: Effective Anti-Aging Pill for Your Legacy Software
Vienna, July 17th, 2008
A legacy system is an old computer system or application program that continues to be used
because the user (typically an organization) does not want to replace or redesign it.
Legacy systems are considered to be potentially problematic by many software engineers for several reasons.
Legacy systems are often hard to maintain, improve, and expand because there is a general lack of understanding of the system.
The designers of the system may have left the organization, leaving no one left to explain how it works.
Such a lack of understanding can be exacerbated by inadequate documentation or manuals getting lost over the years.
Integration with newer systems may also be difficult because new software may use completely different technologies.
Despite these problems, organizations can have compelling reasons for keeping a legacy system, such as:
- The costs of redesigning the system are prohibitive because it is large, monolithic, and/or complex.
- The system requires close to 100% availability, so it cannot be taken out of service, and the cost of designing a new system with a similar availability level is high.
- The way the system works is not well understood. Such a situation can occur when the designers of the system have left the organization, and the system has either not been fully documented or such documentation has been lost.
- The user expects that the system can easily be replaced when this becomes necessary.
- The system works satisfactorily, and the owner sees no reason for changing it; or in other words, re-learning a new system would have a prohibitive attendant cost in lost time and money.
If legacy software runs on only antiquated hardware,
the cost of maintaining the system may eventually outweigh the cost of replacing both the software and hardware unless some
form of emulation or backward compatibility allows the software to run on new hardware.
However, many of these systems do still meet the basic needs of the organization.
The systems to handle customers' accounts in banks are one example.
Therefore the organization cannot afford to stop them and yet some cannot afford to update them.
Regulatory changes must also be considered in a system running in legacy mode.
IT analysts estimate that the cost to replace business logic is about five times that of reuse,
and that's not counting the risks involved in wholesale replacement. Shareholders and managers are increasingly asking,
"Why are we spending so much money on new technology with so little to show for it?"
Ideally businesses would never have to rewrite most core business logic.
After all, debits must equal credits — they always have, and they always will.
Businesses and governments are also recoiling at well-publicized system failures
Increasingly the IT industry is responding to these understandable business concerns.
"Legacy modernization" and "legacy transformation" are now popular terms,
and they mean reusing and refactoring existing, core business logic by providing new user interfaces (typically Web interfaces)
sometimes through the use of techniques such as screen scraping and service-enabled access (e.g., through Web services).
These techniques allow organisations to understand their existing code assets (using discovery tools),
provide new user and application interfaces to existing code, improve workflow, contain costs, minimize risk,
and enjoy classic qualities of service (near 100% uptime, security, scalability, etc.).
Technology companies involved in "enterprise transformation" are growing
and profiting by what many people feel is a more rational approach toward legacy systems.
The reexamination of attitudes toward legacy systems is also inviting more reflection on what makes legacy systems as durable as they are.
Technologists are relearning the fact that sound architecture, practiced up front,
helps businesses avoid costly and risky rewrites in the first place.
The most common legacy systems tend to be those which embraced well-known IT architectural principles, with careful planning
and strict methodology during implementation.
ARIKAN Productivity Group`s Research and Development work from the last four years lead to the product ModelCVS by APG.
This Software is generally based on model transformation.
Since every programming language has (is) a model, the transformation of one programming language into another one is a trivial task for ModelCVS.
The Anti-Aging pill in this case has the Name ProgGen (Program Generator) and is one of the five ModelCVS components from the first commercial version.
ProgGen actually transforms a modeling environment into another one.
The target environment typically is one with more technical features responding to the demand of business.
The related program Parser of ModelCVS analyzes the resource environment and builds a model instance,
which can be considered as a network of program objects. Those objects can be converted into another object network of
the target environment. And finally from the target object network, ProgGen generates the target language or environment.
Environment here means for example an operating system with all technical features.
Since the model is kept in a central repository, this transformation can be repeated into many directions.
The central repository is in this case CA Gens (model based development tool from Computer Associates) Encyclopedia.
ModelCVS ProgGen enhances the code generation capabilities of CA Gen.
Any time your Software reaches the status of a legacy system,
you can bring it into ProgGen and there comes a young and powerful software out from the other end.
It is actually more than Anti-Aging rather a rebirth..
*) some parts of this article are taken from Wikipedia.
|
| |
|
|
Gen(talk) Village opens its Doors
Vienna, July 17th, 2008
The activities in the Second Life will be extended soon.
The new Gen(talk) Village is almost ready for visitors.
After the success of last month´s gatherings in the virtual world
Second Life, APG decided to extend related activities as an additional service for the internet audience.
New land was bought and new Village is being constructed.
Our magnificent British colleague Gentalk Gaffer designed the Gen Village.
SL, Gen Village is an offer - a virtual environment -
to the Gen Community to share their opinions about CA Gen
related themes and to actively involve themselves in subjects like CA news,
APG tools or tools of other Vendors, exchange news with them and solve problems.
The Gentalk Academy will offer some courses about the Gen tools and the tools of the represented vendors,
the first course by APG will be "CA Gen state-of-the-art",
where you will learn how to model with UML2 in CA Gen.
Gentalk Village is open to any company or person who want´s to present it´s Gen
related software or get some information in different interactive courses from represented companies.
Also the purchase of software will be possible.
For more information contact Estefan Euler
or personally Mr. Gentalk Gaffer.
The grand opening will be posted on www.gentalk.biz and on this website.
Here is the URL for the ones who want get some experience in advance
|
| |
|
|
Vienna, Februar 23th, 2008
ModelCVS by APG's datX component is as the first component commercial available. Four years of research and development gave its first harvest. The next available one will be the legacy renewal and metamodeling toolkit components. The APG team is trying hard to test and deliver also this second component during coming weeks. The Legacy Renewal component will transfer PL1 and COBOL(will be possible after PL1) systems to CA Gen. The wizard driven easy-to-use transformation engine enables the user to transfer the sources from one language into CA Gen in an easy way. The reporting component will then be the forth one which will be followed by Java generation component and UML2 diagrams for CA Gen. Check out our related informations under ModelCVS by APG V0.1..
About Estefan Euler:
Estefan is an IT specialist and has already IT experience more than 25 years. You can meet him and friends at www.gentalk.biz *) (second life). He answers your questions about CA Gen and AllFusion and Cleverpath portfolios of CA and especially of course of ModelCVS by APG. He is an OO specialist and has much knowledge about EMF (Eclipse modeling Framework)… You can make 1 on 1 appointment with him at second life and you can write to him under estefan.euler@modelcvs.com. If you want to talk about themes from model based development you can suggest a discussion subject, he will arrange a meeting and call you back.
*)
www.gentalk.biz
is an UK based Blog on and around
CA Gen
.
|
Vienna, Februar 16th, 2008
CA WORLD 2008
Join CA for CA WORLD 2008, taking place November 16–20, 2008 at the Venetian Las Vegas and Sands Expo and Convention Center. At CA WORLD 2007 we had the opportunity to explore real challenges, connect with colleagues, connect with CA leaders and leading partners and see real-world innovation in action. Thousands of CA customers, partners, executives and IT leaders came together in a hands-on learning environment that showcased real-world solutions illustrating how to align IT with the enterprise. This year again ModelCVS will be presented in CA World 2008. A Team of APG will be there. Come to our booth and listen to our specialists, let them explain how model transformation enhances the strength and capabilities of CA Gen.
|
|
|
|
Vienna, December 1.2007
ModelCVS by APG V 1.0
ModelCVS by APG is being prepared for the first commercial version. In the first half of 2008, ModelCVS by APG will be commercially available. After the last conference of 2007 in Mannheim, Germany APG Team started immediately the internal tests and remaining software development work for the first version.
The tool will be available in form of plug-ins for eclipse. The possible options among which customers can choose will be the Metamodeling Toolkit, the data exchange framework, the program generation units for CA Gen, the JAVA Generation components ,some UML2 diagrams for CA Gen, and the reporting tool for CA Gen.
|
|
All those options are subject to test in various customer projects at those days. APG is also planning to publish some of the components as open source units in Eclipse modeling framework...
|
In April 2007 CA World took place in Las Vegas, Nevada .
We had the opportunity to present the current status of our tool "ModelCVS by APG".
The evaluation done by the audience and contacts to new customers were very encouraging.
This years Motto of the conference was 'innovation'.
In this context an article about our project was chosen to be published in the conference newsletter
CA WORLD today April 25, 2007.
As Mr. Guy Kawasaki told in his keynote address, something can be considered as an innovation if it leads to a 10 times 20 times
improvement in related areas.
ModelCVS by APG fullfils this criteria for tool integration.
Model Transformation Enhances the Usability of CA Gen
The shift from code-centric to model-centric development has placed models as first class citizens
in model engineering terminology. Today many modelling languages and tools populate IT tools market space
and support various domains in software development cycle. Consequently of this, the ability to exchange models among development tools
increases the quality and productivity of software development.
However, the lack of interoperability and standards make the usage of tools in combination
for software development an error-prone and cumbersome task.
In collaboration with two Austrian Universities and the Austrian Ministry of Defence,
ARIKAN Productivity Group – A CA partner and IT technology
provider over two decades - is developing tools
which will be commercially available under the name ModelCVS by APG ™ by April 2008. This new unique awarded* technology
enables tool integration through transparent transformation of models among metamodels representing the modelling languages of different tools.
A direct integration of modelling languages by their metamodels is not a trivial task.
It leads to solutions which usually must be post-processed manually. In metamodels all the artefacts and specialities of a programming language
are not explicitly described, since a metamodel has typically an abstract syntax.
Therefore a direct matching of metamodels is not an easy task. The task can be made easier by lifting metamodels to ontologies,
which can describe a programming language concept in a much more explicit way. The matching of the underlying metamodels and the description of the transformation rules
is a straightforward job if ontologies have been created. In the ontology, the language concepts are visible and
the linking of the different tools and metamodels are carried out almost automatically.
A repository captures bridging information during each mapping process and recognizes similar patterns between metamodels.
In the ideal case, the integration of tools with each other is an automatic process with at most a few corrections done by the model manager.
ModelCVS by APG is a framework for a semi-automatic generation of transformation programs. It is similar to a CVS system that transparently transforms models among different modelling tools.
Model transformations are described among the metamodels representing a tool’s modelling language and are executed by a suitable model transformation language.
For example, such a language can transform UML Model to CA Gen Model or BPEL to CA Gen Model.
Tools do not always offer an explicit metamodel ready for model transformation. A Metamodeling toolkit developed as a part of ModelCVS project captures Metamodeling Information
from each tool and builds a complete transformation ready metamodel, ideally with a read/write access to the tools database.
Mustafa Arikan and Xiaoxia Lin presented the current status and components of ModelCVS by APG on Wednesday April,25.2007 at CAWORLD 11:00 SANDS 205-206..
*) This work has been awarded and partly funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport,
Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) under Grant FIT-IT-810806
Vienna March, 1.2007
Among other things, users of ModelCVS by APG™ can
-
Write a CA Gen Model using a OO language like JAVA in a special context editor
-
Use UML2 or any other modelling language to model in CA Gen
-
Connect tools like CA ERwin Data Modeler to CA Gen
-
Use BPEL to model in Gen
-
Extend CA Gen Models using Eclipse Modelling Framework features
-
Easily accomblish any kind of legacy transformation like COBOL2Gen or PLI2Gen
|
|
|
|
Vienna, November 3.2007
|
|
ITIL – Application Management and ModelCVS by APG
|
Tool Integration via model transformation is a key issue of an effective software development. In Mannheim we covered techniques for Tool interconnectivity and demonstrated how tool integration accelerates software development tasks. Using CA Gen and Eclipse connectivity as a case study, the audience have learnt about ModelCVS by APG – an awarded software by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) under Grant FIT-IT-810806 - . Primarily the Infrastructure for an CA Gen - Eclipse Integration was discussed.
But not only Eclipse can be part of an integrated tool chain any other software development tool can also be part oft the tool chain. As Eclipse is a very widely used open source Software Development Environment, our first Tool Integration case study covers CA Gen EMF connectivity. The audience had the opportunity to learn techniques and to get examples for some use cases using CA Gen and Eclipse.
- Using some EMF generators CA Gen models can be created software driven. In this case we go into the opposite direction. One example of this technique is software modernization. Legacy code can be parsed, analyzed and converted to a CA Gen model and consecutively the software can be modernized. This technique is important among others for SOA enablement of legacy systems.
- ModelCVS makes a CA Gen model accessible through the so-called adapter classes. Adapter classes are in the programming language Java available and allow the modification of the Gen Model programmatically. Adapter classes wrap the Gen APIs and give to the programmers a view of a higher abstraction.
November 27 -28, 2007 Mannheim, Deutschland
|
| Vienna November, 3.2007 |
ModelCVS by APG at EDGE Conferences
|
|
We were present at the two EDGE conferences in London, UK and in Dallas, TX and presented our project ModelCVS by APG. The feedback by the audience was once again very positive. Especially in Dallas, - hometown of CA Gen – many members of the core CA Gen Development Team visited our two sessions. In the first hour we showed examples, how ModelCVS by APG is functioning in the second hour we talked a little bit about the theory behind it. During the discussion after the two hours and at the subsequent user meeting the customers could get answers to their specific questions. The overwhelming interest gives us one more reason to quickly finish the remaining work before the first version comes to the market. Many qualified customer contacts from different countries could be achieved. Prior to the Dallas Conference CA invited some partner organizations including APG to a ‚CA Gen Partner Appreciation Dinner‘. Next Meeting of this year is in Mannheim Germany where we will again have the opportunity to present our ModelCVS by APG Tool.
|
|
|
|
|