Re-Platforming
A re-platforming project involves many complex activities that would benefit from the latest advances in modernization technology. In the past most such activities were manual in nature, but Hatha Systems offers a technology and a methodology which allows many of these activities to be automated. The use of such technologies has at least three primary benefits: (1) it allows for rapid execution of the project, (2) it cuts staffing needs and the overall costs, and (3) it ensures viable and correct solutions.
Hatha Systems brings automation and tooling to all three phases of a re-platforming project. Before the actual migration to a new platform is executed, Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ helps analysts understand all aspects of the existing application. This includes taking measurements that allow for precise estimation of the project and aid in the formulation of the migration strategy. During the migration, the Knowledge Refinery™ aids in automating key steps, ensuring a precise and speedy transformation. Post-migration, our tool can be utilized to test the resulting implementation to ensure that no features, data or business rules were left behind.
Hatha Systems Knowledge Refinery™ Full System Extraction and Analysis
Using Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ before the start of the migration
No re-platforming project can commence without first having a thorough knowledge of the "as is," "to be," and "how to." The team responsible for the re-platforming must understand the current application implicitly, must select an appropriate target platform and architecture, and must create a detailed plan on how to migrate from the existing system to the future implementation.
Automation of the "as is" information gathering process is not only cost-effective, but is essential for a timely delivery. While other modernization products offer either a technical view or a business view of the application, Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ allows these views to co-exist and interconnect. Thus enabling the analyst to review the business functions and then navigate directly into the code for traceability. This ensures that all decisions made before the migration have a meaningful business purpose and are technically correct.
Using Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ during the migration
Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ has the ability to deliver significant value during the migration itself. It does so by automating some of the transformation processes, insuring high productivity, efficiency and accuracy. While there is no push-button transformation solution offered by any vendor, individual components can be migrated with a high degree of automation.
- Data - Once an existing database schema is captured into the Knowledge Refinery™ analysis repository, it can be manipulated programmatically to generate a target database schema for the new implementation. Some existing schema transformation tools allow for the automatic derivation of a new schema (usually a relational one) from an old one. Hatha Systems can go a step further and enable schema design decisions based on the usage of data. The analyst, leveraging our tools, may discover that some data elements are obsolete and should not be ported to the new system. They may also discover that searches are made based on certain elements, making them candidates for indexes.
- User Interfaces - While some tools can be used to perform user interface transformation, they are not capable of extracting, analyzing and using information such as screen navigation or input data validation. Hatha Systems Knowledge Refinery™ facilities can support all these functions, leading to a precise transformation of the user interfaces.
- Code - Attempts to fully automate the migration of entire applications have consistently failed in industry. Hatha Systems has developed solutions based on migration of individual components. In this approach, the analyst selects a target architecture and specifies which legacy artifacts are to be carried over to the new implementation. This gives the migration team maximum freedom in establishing a balance between the degree of automation, accuracy and maintainability of the resulting code.
Using Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ after the migration
Once an application has been migrated, it requires extensive testing. One of the main challenges of testing is to find the set of all relevant test cases. Analysis performed by Hatha Systems' Knowledge Refinery™ modernization tools can facilitate assembling a suite of test cases that ensures a suitable coverage of the application functionality. An inventory of business or validation rules discovered by our tool may be used to ensure that they are all implemented in the resulting application and that they are appropriately exercised.
