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Migration and Integration of Central Business Logic with Linux

Customer

Bürgel Wirtschaftsinformationen GmbH & Co. KG

Bürgel is a leading supplier of economic and business information in Germany and, being a subsidiary of Euler Hermes (Allianz Group) and EOS (Otto Group), offers services in the field of credit management, debt collection management, as well as direct marketing management. Its central database in Hamburg contains economic information about roughly 3.6mio companies and 37mio private individuals in Germany.

Industry

Service supplier of economic and business information

Highlights

More and more companies face the decision Bürgel had faced. Whether it is migration or integration: combined with thorough planning, Linux and open-source software are able to meet high demands even with plain migration of source code instead of additional trainings and new programming. Hence, the performance and flexibility of a company's data processing can be optimized, leveraging strategic advantages not only in terms of costs but also in terms of benefits.

Project scope

In 2002, Bürgel, a leading supplier of economic and business information, faced a restructuring of its business units and a shift in focus to online business. Hence, new hardware capacities were required.

As maintenance contracts for its then current systems were running out, Bürgel planned major investments in a new generation of mainframe computers. Though the experience made with the mainframes in place were good, the capacities required for a re-alignment demanded major capital expenditures.

At that time, Bürgel was successfully running several pilot projects to verify the strategy of using Linux and Open Source in remote systems. Combined with thorough planning, this strategy also meets high requirements. As early as 2001, positive experiences regarding the performance and stability of HPC-Linux-Clusters (e.g. to increase query and processing capacities) had been made.

After conducting several feasibility studies, successfully running different pilot projects, and a thorough evaluation of available technologies, the alternative objective was defined: Bürgel had decided to shift its complete business process and systems architecture to Linux and open-source. A critical issue was the combination of existing, well-proven technologies, such as Cobol and DB2, and new components, such as Java/J2EE and Application Server. Bürgel's objective was to invest in new technologies in order to optimize the potential and flexibility of its data processing.

One of the core components, whose logic was based on Cobol and DB2, was a dialog application for gathering and maintaining all kinds of system data. The application was used by more than 1,000 users throughout Germany in terminal applications (3270 technology).

The migration of the attached system architecture had been recognized as one of the key challenges at an early stage of the whole project.

Goals / Success Factors:

  • No necessity for training the end-user -> the look and feel of the HOST had to stay the way it was.
  • No new programming of about 500 dialogs and 1,500 application modules.
  • Implementation of possibilities to include enhancements in the future.
  • Use of Open Source wherever possible and useful.
  • Preservation of centralized data processing and storage – thin clients.
  • Performance of a soft migration simultaneous to running business operations.
  • Use of up-to-date software development technologies (Java, Eclipse).

Approach

After having attended trade shows where we led several conversations and after months of unsuccessful efforts to find a suitable migration tool, the decision to perform an individual and hence reliable development was made.

The systems that were run on the previous mainframes/hosts consisted of mix of Cobol applications and a generating language (VAGen). The end-user dialogs were controlled and managed by the transaction system IMS.

After initially assessing the existing source codes, developing prototypes, and evaluating the Eclipse programming environment, Bürgel decided to shift the existing 500 dialogs and 1,500 related application modules to Java via code migration.


Based on Java/J2EE, cimt AG developed a prototype mapping the central Cobol application logic. Relying on a long-term experience in J2EE projects, we compiled an expertise regarding the realization of the whole dialog system in a Linux and J2EE environment.

Prior to this, we had developed a Java framework which helped us to transfer the existing Cobol source codes. Hence, this framework included all necessary standard types, control statements and basic functions of the business logic (input, output, formatting). The process control of the then running transaction system IMS was replaced by the Java servlet engine TOMCAT. High parallelism was of utmost importance in order to provide the necessary performance.

cimt ag developed a converter that generated 15,000 Java classes from the 1,500 application modules during the migration. Using the open-source revision control system Subversion, this newly generated application source code was systematically stored and documented.

During parallel testing, the application's functionality was extensively verified and compared to the existing software. By accessing a central database system, both systems, the new TOMCAT architecture as well as the existing HOST IMS, could be run and tested simultaneously.

On the day of deadline, while business operations were running, Bürgel and cimt switched the dialog application to Linux, affecting more than 1,000 users and thus more than 1,000 customers. The former mainframes were now replaced by an application cluster consisting of standard servers and the combined use of Java and Cobol applications.

At first, the introduction of the new system to daily operations was performed with a few users and subsequently at individual office locations. The servers were selected with regards to high availability and a multi-redundant setup, so that in case of total breakdown of individual server systems, operations are not affected and the processing speed remains stable.

Customer Benefits

  • The application is more flexible and the customer is able to adapt to new challenges quicker, decreasing costs for extensions in the future.
  • Neither employees nor customers of Bürgel were significantly affected in their work by the migration.
  • Extensions do not cause additional license fees.
  • Redundant systems on all layers, capability to any desired extension without fixed step costs.
  • Results from running the system over several months show the servers working on a high level of stability.

Project data

Status: Operating
Duration: 1.5 yeards
Type of project: technology project
Dimension: 3 consultants, 3 customer’s employees
Perspective: Operating since 08/2005

Information technologies

  • IBM Mainframe OS/390
  • IMS DB/2
  • MS Visual C++
  • Linux: SuSe
  • Java J2EE, TOMCAT, RMI, IBM UDB
  • Eclipse, Maven, Subversion

Your contact person

Additional information regarding this and similar projects may be requested from:

Christian Kreutzmann / Phone: +49 (40) 53302-0