Although infrastructure costs and a shrinking talent pool of capable developers are the top reasons companies give us for modernizing their Natural applications, the complexities beneath those same issues are often the top causes for modernization hesitation. Our Natural replatforming solution, the Application Transparency Platform (ATP), can help alleviate the pain. It gives our customers a solution that will enable their Natural dev teams to continue to function as they have for decades while providing a pathway for a phased approach that reduces risk and gives the customer control over timing and scope.
Natural Replatforming with ATP
Application Transparency Platform (ATP) is a Natural replatforming solution that provides an end-to-end strategic pathway for lower license costs, higher productivity, and full preservation of your
ATP Database Conversion
legacy assets and business rules. First, we convert your ADABAS databases to relational models. Since flexibility is a primary concern in any transformation, you can choose which way you want to go- DB2, SQL Server, or Oracle database. This liberates your data from pre-relational lock down, and opens it up to consumption by modern business intelligence systems. In addition, modern web applications can access the relational databases directly.
Once the database is transformed, the Natural replatforming process can begin. Natural code is not converted, it is imported into ATP as-is for execution. ATP allows you to move your Natural applications, unchanged, from your current mainframe environment to a more economical and more robust Natural replatforming environment. This shift reduces or eliminates maintenance and license fees, as well as mainframe workloads. Since ATP interprets and executes each Natural command, your Natural applications can execute against the new relational database without changes to the Natural syntax of your current applications.
ATP’s Developer Interface
Continue to Develop in Natural Syntax
Natural replatforming with ATP allows development teams to continue to maintain and enhance the applications in a language they are accustomed to, with the support of modern development tools. ATP boasts a full-featured UI development platform that includes Natural code analysis, flow diagramming, impact analysis, pattern matching, version comparison, and interactive debugging.
Since your applications remain the same, your business team’s user experience will be unaffected and no training is required. Screens retain the same user-created look and feel. Even the keystrokes, tabbing, and PF-keys remain unchanged. It is easy to update the default colors and backgrounds, but user interface changes are optional.
Modernize At Your Own Pace
Natural replatforming allows our customers to get off of the mainframe quickly, while giving Natural developers an enhanced platform to continue to work in the syntax they understand. It reduces costs by shifting the applications and databases away from the mainframe infrastructure and onto a modern Windows-based environment; when the time comes to move away from procedural Natural syntax, the “Save As” feature allows for an easy transition to object-oriented C#. Conversion to object-oriented code is completely optional, and can be done at your own pace and within a scope that is most comfortable to you. In other words, Natural replatforming using ATP is the best of all modernization worlds.
To learn more about the Application Transparency Platform, check out these additional resources:
