Independent reports started to arrive about migrations

July 2004

Independent reports started to arrive about migrations

Our net.digest columnist John Burke has been tracking reports of HP 3000 migrations, and says that the stories relay headaches as well some success, in “Migration, or Migraine, You Choose.” Burke reports:

Finally, we are seeing some real experiences that haven’t been washed and waxed by a vendor before being presented. It all started with a rather broad request. “I would like to hear from people who have migrated software from the HP 3000, or failed in the attempt. I’m interested in services, automated translation tools, emulation, Eloquence, SQL databases, platforms, anything. We have a lot of Powerhouse code — Quiz and Quick, with a tiny bit of QTP. Have people had good experiences with Powerhouse on other platforms? We also have about a million lines of Protos code. Is there an automated solution for this? Do people take the generated COBOL and translate that?”

From someone with obvious painful experience, “No matter who it is, don’t let anyone sell you on the idea of ‘Best of Breed’ software. This concept is just that, a concept. It doesn’t work. The idea that you can buy Joe’s financial package, Mary’s warehouse management system, Tom’s order management system, and then just plug ‘em all together and they run like magic is pure myth.

“Every purveyor of this concept/software will tell you how they have API (application program interfaces) for all of their programs and, since everyone is using Java/C++ and some flavor of Unix/Linux, you just use these APIs to pass data back and forth (don’t even get me started on this one). In reality, and all too often, you’ll run into situations where Mary’s warehouse management software’s API outputs a three-pronged-grounded-plug, but Tom’s order management system only accepts a 2-prong-non-grounded-plug. Then, my friend, you begin to hemorrhage money to both Mary’s software company and Tom’s software company, so they can fit together. And then there is the issue of ensuring synchronization of version levels, etc.”

Another caution, “The issue with Protos is the runtime library, which the generated COBOL calls, and which you will need migrated or replicated on the new platform. It’s not impossible, but you have to reverse-engineer what the library does, and provide that to satisfy the calls your COBOL code makes.”

Some reports were more hopeful. “We have been converting from HP/Cobol/Powerhouse/IMAGE to W2K/C#.NET/MS SQL over the last 18 months. After a tricky beginning (painful re-learning process) I have to say it’s been a positive experience. The OO (object orientated) thing took a long while to get my head around, but re-designing the systems using this methodology has been beneficial. I have to say the new environment is much more powerful and flexible than when we worked with Cobol/Powerhouse/IMAGE. The only thing I would say against this whole experience is dealing with new staff that thinks the computer world came into existence about three years ago. According to them, XML is the only way to do everything and anyone who doesn’t agree is stupid.”

Another report arrived on a hopeful note. “Our migration experience to date has gone better than we originally anticipated. As an HP 3000/MPE/IMAGE shop for 30 years, our technical expertise was naturally mostly in that environment, particularly with COBOL and Speedware. After much study, we decided to migrate our HP-resident administrative applications (Payroll, Accounting, Purchasing, Inventory, Human Resources) to an Oracle-based PC package from a third-party designed for the Quebec college market.

“Following a lot of hard work by our small MIS team and on the part of our user community, the migration of all these applications was completed in a matter of several months. Other than as a repository for archival data, we no longer use the HP 3000 at all for these systems. Our academic systems (Student Records, Scheduling, etc.) were all developed in-house and remain on the HP 3000 for now but, following a great deal of discussion within the college and beyond, we’ve decided on a collaborative approach with several other local colleges to jointly redevelop these applications. They’ll be migrated over time to a new, networked Windows environment. A strong point of this approach will be that the new applications can continue to update our IMAGE database structure on a parallel basis, so that we’ll only need to finally pull the plug on the HP 3000 when we’re good and ready.”