Modernity is not an added value per se – but a cleanly structured application landscape is: it saves time and money. Every day. Otherwise, maintenance and development will become more and more expensive and the risk of errors will increase continuously. The Njema Assessment gives you clarity about the internal structure of the applications in terms of software and data. Here are a few keywords about the value of the assessment
- Integration of new software packages
- Outsourcing applications to the cloud (cloud enablement)
- Development of new in-house applications
- Migration to new platforms
- General legacy modernization
- Support for program development and maintenance by visualizing the networking of program code with data and files
- Project-accompanying quality assurance – especially important for projects with high complexity and long duration
- Ensuring completeness: detecting redundant or missing source code
- Detecting homonymous objects: different content with the same name
Pleasant side effects of modernization:
- Projects can be completed on time and on budget
- running costs are drastically reduced (50% is not uncommon)
- Maintenance and new developments are possible with the knowledge and skills of the employees currently on board. There is no need to hire expensive external staff.
Modernization becomes feasible
Modernization opens the door to a leaner and more flexible system. The assessment makes it possible to„streamline“ the current system and position it in such a way that potential project obstacles can be removed before the project even begins. It also leads to a significant reduction in ongoing and project-related costs. A. Homogenization
- Reduce the number of programming languages used. Assembler and 4GL languages should be eliminated as a preparatory measure.
- 4GL languages can be ported to Cobol or replaced by report generators.
- Use of only one database and only one OLTP monitor. This saves human resources and license costs.
- Only one tool for each task type, e.g. only one screen painter, one scheduler, one scripting language, one Sort.
B. Modularization The graphical preparation in the assessment shows all links between software and data entities. It can often be seen that a planned packaging would sever hundreds of links between programs and between programs and data.
- The number of connections between programs of different applications should be reduced. There are many different ways to do this. For example, a group of external connections can be mapped by a service.
- Classic files can be migrated to the database. The database automatically backs up and restores data in the event of an error. With classic files, on the other hand, jobs must be started and administrators must be involved.
- Pure working data can be automatically replaced by Njema with in-memory files.
- Functions that are used by more than one program can be moved to a common package and called as a service.
C. Remove redundancies The assessment shows all software entities that are not addressed. These „dead“ entities can be„archived away„. The same applies to many files that are only written but never read. Exception: print files. Once these measures have been completed, the application landscape is structured and positioned in such a way that the effort, costs and duration of an upcoming project such as re-hosting, cloud enablement, outsourcing, integration of third-party software, development of an in-house application can be reliably estimated. The elimination of technologies not only reduces running costs, but also the effort and risk involved in maintenance and development. D. Field analyses Another useful function is the ability to search entire software inventories with direct and logical patterns. Examples:
- direct: output all statements relating to field names ending in „-KDNR“
- logical: search for all statements in which a field determined by a pattern is changed or read.
Please note that Njema works on the basis of statements, so the references you are looking for can be spread over several lines.