n e w s l e t t e r innovation - software...

Ne

ws

le

tt

er

Welcome to the Spring – Summer edition of TECHniques! This issue focuses on “Innovation”— which in a way follows on from the last issue’s “Listening to Customers” theme.

For Adabas and Natural customers, we highlight the continued investment being made in the technology they use, and its increasing integration with evolutionary concepts such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Business Process Management (BPM) and Governance. Learn more about our product vision based upon the key principles of ease of use, interoperability, efficiency and transparency.

We look at Natural in a historical context as it is reaches a landmark 30 years of age, but also explain why it’s never been in better shape thanks to the release of NaturalONE, an integrated development environment that will no doubt attract new fans and enhance the experience for existing users.

A number of customers have shared their concerns with regard to increasing data volumes and the often conflicting calls to reduce the IT budget while retaining data longer to meet compliance demands. Data Archiving for Adabas is an exciting new release, which enables you to define, manage and run archiving tasks that move historical data off the production environment and store it into a long-term archive.

I also welcome for the first time a contribution from IDS Scheer, highlighting the power of MashZone to deliver cool business mashups in minutes. There is also an introduction toARISalign, the world’s first social Business Process Management (BPM) platform, another great example of innovative thinking in practice.

We also look at why it makes sense to use the latest version of webMethods (8.0), and the importance of testing both in the new release and in CentraSite 8.0 as part of a SOA Governance strategy. Look out for a drill-down article that focuses on the policy-based clustering capabilities in Broker 8.0.

Lastly, we explain some of the new features of the Technology Communities that help you leverage social media, stay up-to-date on product announcements and see the latest forum posts—all from your favourite Community home page.

Happy reading!

Gerd Schneider | SVP ETS PMM and Communities

TECHniquestechNical tips aNd tricks for the software ag commuNity

InnovaTIon

dear software ag Technology communiTy member,

InSIdE THIS ISSuE:

adaBaS SPoTLIGHTIntroducing Data Archiving for Adabas…PAGE 2

naTuRaL SPoTLIGHTCelebrating 30 Years of Natural Programming Language…PAGE 4

NaturalONE Gives Developers a “Royal Flush” of Capabilities…PAGE 8

aRIS SPoTLIGHTARIS MashZone: Probably the Best...PAGE 10

How Social BPM Helps You Capture Your Current Processes Faster and More Accurately…PAGE 12

WEBmETHodS SPoTLIGHTEnterprise-Class Messaging with webMethods Broker…PAGE 14

Upgrading to webMethods Version 8.0…PAGE 16

SOA Testing: How Can Your Organization Maintain Quality…PAGE 17

TECHnoLoGy SPoTLIGHTWhat’s Next for Adabas and Natural?…PAGE 18

CommunITIES SPoTLIGHTTake a Fresh Look at SAG Communities…PAGE 20

SPRInG – SummER 2010 EdITIon

TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION

AdabasSpotlight

Accumulator

Archive Service Archive Service

Accumulator Extractor

Extractor

Browser UI Computer BComputer A

By archiving data from the production

database, you’ll experience:

Faster OLTP application performance

Savings by deferring hardware purchases

due to decreased database size

Increased database availability

Less stress responding to regulatory

requirements

Faster performance

Performance of OLTP applications are easily

enhanced by reducing the size of the

database. Archiving allows you to remove

obsolete or infrequently used data out of

the production database. With less data in

the database, OLTP applications can operate

faster. A smaller volume of data to search

•

•

•

•

introducing data archiving for adabaS: ExPERIENcE A NEw lEVEl Of SPEEd, AccESSIbIlITy ANd SAVINGSBy Bruce Beaman, Senior Director, Solutions Marketing, Software AG

Software AG developed Data Archiving for Adabas to help customers who are facing data storage problems brought on by the

exponential growth in data and the regulatory requirements to retain more data. This feature-rich tool speeds up the performance

of Adabas on any platform by removing infrequently used data from the production database and storing it into a long-term

archive. Data Archiving for Adabas provides automated archiving functions and robust tools for search, verification, extraction,

restore and recovery so your organization will easily be able to meet current and emerging data retention requirements.

on in the production database produces

faster results for queries.

Decrease storage/hardware requirements

Through archiving, you can shrink the

production database size. This enables you

to defer any new server purchases. Archived

data may be stored on less expensive

hardware options thus reducing the demand

for storage on the primary system, which

in many cases is a mainframe.

Increase database availability

With a lighter load on the CPU after archiving,

basic maintenance functions and restoration

take less time. This ability to decrease the

outage window for the database can help

enhance SLAs.

FIGure 1: Data Archiving for Adabas

Product Architecture

reASONS FOr ArCHIVINGBy archiving unneeded information,

database performance can be improved by

more than 20%. By lightening the data-

base load, you can improve the response

time of the application, upgrade, backups

and database reorganizations. Thanks to

this lightened load, you can improve SLAs

with shorter outage windows for database

upgrades and recovery. You’ll also pass the

ever growing regulatory inspections from

the likes of HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and

Basel II by keeping data from multiple

database instances accessible longer by

archiving and protecting that data in a

separate data repository.

Store data you don’t need every day

in another Adabas database on a less

expensive device, and move historical

data to a permanent vault. Either way,

you can recall data anytime using an

intuitive browser-based interface.

2

vault thus decreasing the size of the

production database. Of course, a smaller

database always means better performance.

Save time and effort

With a state of the art user interface,

Archiving for Adabas can help DBAs easily

automate archiving execution to keep only

needed data within the production envi-

ronment thus maintaining peak performance.

The intuitive browser-based user interface,

which requires little to no training, lets

DBAs perform all necessary tasks such as

establishing the archive environment,

defining actions, archive unattended, search,

recall and validate data with ease. With

the time savings provided by the automated

archive function, DBAs save time and are

free to tackle other tasks.

Maintain data Integrity

Archiving for Adabas uses a holistic archiving

approach by storing business data AND meta

data thus each step in the lifecycle of

business data is recorded and versioned. If

the structure of the business data changes,

the archiving tool accounts for it by storing

the changed file structure. This ensures that

data is always correctly recalled indepen-

dent of the point in time of the data life

cycle. Tremendous time and effort is saved

because the versioning of the archived

data is tracked by the tool.

A periodic health check can also be per-

formed to check the validity of the data in

the vault without the need to recall the

entire archive. In case of problems, an alert

of contamination is issued and an immediate

remedy can be applied to the archive.

easy search and recall

In order to keep your archived solution in

check, Archive for Adabas provides a filter

which allows you to archive just the most

important data, not necessarily archive an

entire record. This fine-grained capability

reduces the time and storage required for

archiving while still reducing the CPU load

on the production database. When searching

the archive, simple desktop query tools

SAG_

ADAS

pot_

Data

Arch

ivin

g_Sp

rSum

2010

_29J

un10

To find the Software AG office nearest you, please visit: www.softwareag.com© 2010 Software AG. All rights reserved. Software AG and all Software AG products are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Software AG. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

readily respond to regulatory requirements

In today’s world, many companies own

multiple instances of Adabas on separate

servers. Any audit would necessitate a

costly data “dump” from multiple data-

bases and a painful, inefficient data search.

Since archives from multiple Adabas

instances are stored in a single storage

“vault” and all archived data is now

searchable using a single tool, the cost and

time for search and retrieval in the case of

audit is minimized. Through this consolida-

tion, you are also able to proactively

discover data holes or overlap before

compliance-related issues arise.

WHY uSe ArCHIVING FOr ADABAS FrOM SOFTWAre AGWith Data Archiving for Adabas, you’ll have:

One tool to consolidate multiple instances of Adabas into a single “vault”

An easy to use state-of-the-art browser-based user interface

Automated archive scheduling, data recall, and data validity checking functions

Tool to capture and manage the ever changing data structures over time

A robust filter and search capability for easy retrieval of historic information

A built-in start and recovery capability

Simple consolidation

With Data Archiving for Adabas, you can

remove historical and infrequently used

data from multiple production databases

and deposit it into one of two locations:

an intermediate Adabas repository or an

offline “vault” (data store). By moving to

an intermediate database, the production

database stays focused on current data

while allowing the application access to

the intermediate repository to retrieve

infrequently used data. Historical data is

archived to an offline “vault”. The vault is a

set of intelligently managed files on either

Linux, UNIX or Windows (LUW) or Mainframe

platforms. The data is deleted in the source

database as soon as it is stored safely in the

•

•

•

•

•

•

may be used without having to recall the

data into Adabas. By minimizing the amount

of data recalled, the speed to find archived

data is optimized.

WHY IT MATTerSWith Data Archiving for Adabas, you won’t

be to blame for slow system performance

or long downtimes for maintenance. You’ll

be applauded for improving your SLAs. You

won’t need to carry the burden of begging

for more funds for a larger platform to

operate your database. And you’ll be the

company hero when regulators come

knocking at the door seeking historical

data for review.

With Data Archiving for Adabas, your

enterprise will be able to:

Defer new server purchases and save money

Improve SLAs with reduced outage window for database upgrades and recovery

Archive multiple Adabas instances into a single storage “vault”

Search all archived data with a single tool, in a single view

Meet increasing requirements for long term data retention

Increase the performance of the Adabas production environment by at least 20%

•

•

•

•

•

•

3


NaturalSpotlight

Celebrating 30 yearS of natural programming language NOw MORE VAlUAblE ThAN EVERBy Karlheinz Kronauer, Director Product Management, Software AG

When Dr. Peter Page and Margit Neumann developed the fourth-generation programming language (4GL) Natural in the mid 1970s,

nobody would have dared to predict that they were laying the foundation for a success story that continues even now. Meanwhile,

Natural has become a modern development environment and is in use at numerous companies around the world. The programming

language is now a state-of-the-art interactive development environment that quickens the pulse of software developers.

cripples the mind; its teaching should,

therefore, be regarded as a criminal

offense.” And that was the inspiration for

developing Natural.

The first version of Natural was released in

late 1979, with the city of Vienna as the first

customer. “Within two months, we completed

the first application and started using it,”

recalled Peter Leibl from Vienna’s data center.

What is so special about Natural? As the

name makes clear, ease of use is the

highest priority. Programmers can focus

completely on solving business problems

without having to deal with complicated

syntactical constructs and platform-specific

Here’s how it all began: Natural’s inventors

were given the task of calculating dog

license fees for the city of Vienna, Austria

using the Adabas database system and the

COBOL programming language. Assemblers

were still frequently used for programming

in those days, and the third-generation

languages COBOL (COmmon Business

Oriented Language), FORTRAN (FORmula

TRANslator), and PL/1 (Programming

Language One) were considered state of

the art. Experience gained on this project

thoroughly confirmed Edsger Wybe Dijkstra’s

criticism in his 1975 article, “How do we

tell truths that might hurt?” The Dutch

computer scientist and Turing Award

winner bitingly wrote that “the use of COBOL

quirks and tools. Natural’s second principle

for success is to “write once, run every-

where.” Applications developed with

Natural run on almost all hardware plat-

forms, from netbooks and Linux to main-

frames. The syntax based on natural

language simplifies learnability and main-

tenance, especially for English speakers.

Natural was originally developed for

mainframes. In the late seventies, telepro-

cessing monitors, remote data processing,

and transaction processing were still

exotic-sounding concepts at many compa-

nies. Batch processing was the norm for

essential applications. Punch cards held the

source code, and there were few suitable

editors or tools for developing programs

interactively. In particular, application

programming with screen input and output

for end users was still in its infancy. Syntax

errors were not recognized during pro-

gramming; rather, they first came to light

during compiling. Even when the program

code was finally complete, the linkage

steps still had to follow. It was only then

that testing could take place, which slowed

and complicated the development process

greatly. Natural eliminated this unneces-

sary overhead in one fell swoop, and

1979’s Version 1 included an interactive

program editor. Being able to enter pro-

gram code online, check syntax immedi-

ately, and instantly see the results on the

screen were sensational back then and

drastically increased productivity.

FiGure 1: Natural’s Full Screen editor in Split Screen Mode

4

Natural’s advantages soon won over many companies. In the early eighties, Natural was

in productive use at more than 500 companies worldwide, and subsequent development

proceeded rapidly. While the 3GL languages hardly had any notable developments, the

release of Natural Version 2.1 in 1987 was a quantum leap forward. Natural’s full-screen

editors allowed code to be entered elegantly, and screens using character-based 3270

interfaces (a de-facto standard of IBM) for input and output could be created easily using

an integrated WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. The screen editor supported

the separation of processing and presentation logic, so that the programming logic did not

have to be modified when the presentation was changed. And long before the introduction

of object-orientated programming, Natural already had handy array editors to separate

the data from the program logic, enabling reusability. The concept of structured programming,

now widely used, was supported with Natural 2.1 in its structured mode, which enabled

developers to maintain the rules of structured program syntax. In particular, internationally-

active companies valued the opportunities presented by Natural to create multilingual

applications very easily. In the meantime, add-on products extended Natural’s range of

functions: Natural Security guarantees the security of the development and data-flow

environments, and Repository Predict documents and manages data models and metadata.

In the mid eighties, Adabas and other popular databases such as VSAM, DB2, and IMS/DB

became supported.

With the expanded, large customer base, the need for communication between customers

also increased. Natural user groups took root in many countries and the Natural Conference

was launched in the United States. The founder of the annual conference, Jim Wisdom of

Boston University, says: “The conference offers customers and prospective customers alike an

excellent technical forum for exchange. Customers present their Natural solutions and discuss

Natural functionalities and developments with Software AG developers.” Natural has always

been geared toward customers’ needs to develop business-critical applications simply. It is

always open to the customers’ requests, which are taken into account during development.

Personal computers really began to take hold in the early nineties and, consequently, the

first version of Natural to run on Windows 3.1 was released in 1994. Along with the graphical

user interfaces (GUIs) for the developers themselves, GUIs and event-controlled applications

could also be developed with this version of Natural onwards. See Figure 2.

FiGure 2: A Gui Dialog Created with

Natural for Windows.

5

In 1992, the first Natural version for UNIX came onto the market, and the first Natural Linux

version followed 10 years later. The Natural systems on open systems could communicate

easily with Adabas via the Natural language elements or SQL syntax and with the relational

database systems common on these platforms, including Oracle, Microsoft’s SQL Server,

Sybase, and IBM’s DB2. With the introduction of Natural on Linux, companies began to migrate

from mainframes to the Linux platform, which posed no problems, thanks to Natural’s

portability. The Salzburg state government was one of the first customers to migrate

successfully. “We achieved considerable cost savings with the same or better performance

following the problem-free migration from Adabas and Natural to Linux. The migration

was a complete success, thanks to the portability of Natural and Adabas,” says Josef

Scherndl of Landesinformatik Salzburg. In the mid nineties, an additional Natural innovation

was welcomed by the market: Natural’s single point of development concept. While programs

are developed in Natural Studio in a Windows environment, the data-flow environment is

on a mainframe, Unix/Linux server, or Windows Server. This allows Natural developers to

work with all the advantages of a GUI in Windows, but the programs can be on a mainframe,

where they are compiled and executed. Graphical tools support the developer: A debugger

enables convenient testing of mainframe programs, and database content can be seen with

the data browser.

Web-enabling features support the increasing spread of the Internet. Natural was the first

language to directly process XML documents. New language elements allow the parsing

and serializing of XML documents. By supporting HTTP(S) protocols, Natural programs can

communicate with the World Wide Web and efficiently read and write all types of documents

via links (URLs). Of course, Natural now has language elements to process Unicode data

and convert code pages. Accessing SOAP-based Web services is just as simple, and, in turn,

Natural programs can be made available as Web services. See Figure 3.

FiGure 3: Developing and Testing a Natural Web Program in eclipse

6

With the increasing spread of Eclipse as a development platform—primarily for Java

applications—Natural was also integrated into Eclipse. Therefore, developers who are less

familiar with the features of a mainframe can also benefit from the advantages of Natural

as a language for solving business-critical problems.

Because of the growing popularity of Eclipse as a development platform—especially for

Java applications—Natural was integrated with Eclipse. This makes it easy for developers

who do not have comprehensive mainframe knowledge to develop modern, Web-based

business applications.

These days, Software AG has further enhanced its support for Eclipse by simplifying the

generation of Web Services and the development of AJAX-based rich internet applications.

This enables existing Natural programming logic to be easily reused in browser-based

Web applications. To facilitate the integration of any enterprise applications, as for example

SAP, and to guarantee SOA governance, specific solutions from the webMethods suite, like

Integration Server (ESB) or CentraSite, can be directly incorporated into the development

environment. The new development environment is available under the product name

NaturalONE. With NaturalONE developers can program Web applications and Web services

which can be executed on all major platforms like mainframes, UNIX, Linux, Windows

and OpenVMS.

SAG_

NAT

Spot

_Cel

ebra

ting3

0Yea

rs_S

prSu

m20

10_2

9Jun

10


7


NaturalSpotlight

but also appeal to business users outside

the IT group.

GeneratinG new excitement—worldwideSince its launch at the start of March, 2010,

the feedback from every event we have

attended has been overwhelmingly

positive. There have been many opportuni-

ties during May and June to experience

NaturalONE close-up—at the two Process

World events (Washington and Berlin), the

International User Group Conference in the

Czech Republic and the various Adabas

and Natural Roadshows held across

North America for example. During these

events and User Group meetings, we have

heard many interesting comments—some

see the Product Life Cycle management

of particular interest. As the skills question

becomes ever more prominent, others

view NaturalONE’s Eclipse capabilities

as a way to motivate young people to

try Natural.

NaturalONE GIVES dEVElOPERS a “Royal FluSh” oF CapabilitieS By Bruce Beaman, Senior Director, Solutions Marketing, Software AG

FiGure 1: naturalone with natural engineer Plug-in module

Shows the distribution of Natural objects in an application.

develoP, imProve and manaGe—all in oneImagine a card player who is dealt a king

here, a queen there and an ace a bit later,

and so on, failing to realize that in his hand

is now a Royal Flush, much more valuable

than the sum of its individual parts. The same

has been true of Natural. But now, in a single

download with NaturalONE, we are offering

a “Royal Flush” of powerful capabilities for

the next generation of developers.

NaturalONE has helped people to see the

advantages of the Natural language with a

fresh set of eyes, as well as appreciate the

fantastic set of tools that has been added

to Natural through the years. NaturalONE is

a unique integrated development environ-

ment (IDE) that lets developers code and

test applications, expose Natural objects as

Web services and create rich Web interfaces

for their applications. In this way, NaturalONE

lets the developer produce applications that

not only support enterprise SOA and BPM,

it’s safe to say that no other product belonging to the adabas/ Natural family has generated this level of excitement for many years. here is a sampling of comments on NaturaloNe from around the world:

With NaturalONE, we can take full advantage of web-based technologies for the benefit of our customers, plus attract new developers from the universities.

travel-BA.Sys GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

NaturalONE enables core business applications to be integrated with new distribution channels by quickly and intuitively exposing Web Services.

Insurance Company, France

In just three days, two of our Natural Programmers, who knew nothing about web application development, built the Ajax web pilot themselves.

NaturalONE Pilot Project, USA

“Thirty years ago, Natural 1 was introduced and it made applica-tion development easier, more productive, more successful than when other popular platforms were used (COBOL, PL/1, etc). Now, Software AG is in a similar position, introducing what, to many, would be a new product to compete with the prevailing development languages of the day. And its name? NaturalONE.”

Former Software AG User Group President

8

SaG_

nat

Spot

_nat

ural

one_

SprS

um20

10_2

9Jun

10


try naturalone For FreeWhy not see for yourself what all the excitement is about? You can access a free Community

Edition at www.naturalone.com.

The Community Edition comes with its own run-time environment for local testing, as

well as a pre-built demo application that includes a tutorial for exploring NaturalONE’s most

important features. On the Community Edition Forum, you can find answers to frequently

asked questions, get basic support, share best practices and view other samples. At the

forum, you also can make comments about the sample application, get help and post

extensions or new samples.

Be Part oF the naturalone communityWe’ve seen over 1,000 downloads of the Community Edition to date, and are actively

encouraging everyone to join the Natural Community at http://communities.softwareag.com/

ecosystem/communities/public/natural. Here you can participate in the NaturalONE

discussion forums, stay updated on additions to the growing number of tutorials and

much more.

There has never been a product quite like NaturalONE. It will introduce many developers

to Natural for the first time and will cause others who thought they’d seen it all to

think again. You owe it to yourself to visit www.naturalone.com and see what this

“Royal Flush” looks like.

9


ARISSpotlight

Why ARIS MAShZoneUser departments are constantly confronted

with the same problems—having to leverage

a vast amount of decision-relevant data

from different sources, both internal and

external. Relationships and dependencies

are often unclear or can only be accessed

and visualized with a great deal of effort.

Evaluations of marketing campaigns,

procurement and sales efficiency, compliance

with service level agreements, etc., need

to be regularly updated to meet current

requirements. For departmental users it is

very difficult to obtain an overview of all

this information. They require new reports

and dashboards—which are traditionally

created by the IT department. This leads to

often lengthy wait times for the user

“All in all, ARIS Mashzone probably rates as currently the best mashup program in the world. There is no comparable solution

available at this time from Microsoft, IBM, or oracle.” - netzwelt

department and excessive workloads for IT

staff. Users need an opportunity to obtain

reports and dashboards quickly and in an

attractive graphical form depending on a

particular situation or task.

Cool BuSIneSS MAShupS In MInuTeSARIS MashZone is the solution for all these

problems. This tool allows combining data

sources, analyzing data, and visualizing it

in form of attractive Dashboards. You don’t

need programming skills because standard

interfaces support linking of different data

sources. User can combine intuitively

content by the help of operators for

aggregating, filtering, sorting, mixing, etc.

Data source can be internal enterprise data

FIguRe 1: overview of a Worldwide product Roadshow

like data from ERP/CRM application or

Excel sheets, but also external data from

the internet. Using web 2.0 technologies,

the Mashups can be shared and developed

collaboratively within the enterprise.

ARIS MashZone is crossing the department

frontiers and allows an aggregated over-

view of all departments. It closes the gap

between static tables and inflexible reports

on the one hand and the need for graphical,

interactive, easy-to-understand dashboards

on the other hand. In addition, linking

internal company data with public accessible

data sources and Web services delivers

valuable new insights and provides a solid

foundation of business decisions.

30 MInuTeS To AnAlyZe A RoAdShoWIn the following we will describe a typical

MashZone scenario. The initial basis is an

analysis of a marketing campaign con-

ducted by United Motors Group (a fictional

company). The company had held a series

of events all around the globe to present

its new Green Car model to dealers in

various countries. The marketing depart-

ment has now been asked to provide

management with up-to-the-minute data

captured during the roadshow. A marketing

employee creates this Mashup to combine

and visualize the mass of data. See Figure 1.

ARiS MAShZone... PRObAbly ThE bEST MAShUP PROGRAM IN ThE wORldBy Jörg Klückmann, Head of Process Intelligence Solution Marketing, IDS Scheer

10

The basic data consists of information on registrations, the number of participants, data on

the frequency of website visits, and the feedback forms handed out at each roadshow

stop. Data sources are different Excel Sheets, the CRM system and the website traffic from

Google analytics.

The total number of registrations and participants can now be seen at a glance. The level

of attendance can be calculated in MashZone. The participant data is broken down by

region in the adjacent pie chart. Each segment of the pie represents a region and

corresponds in size to the total number of participants. In contrast, the world map provides

a color-coded overview of average attendance per region. The results of the feedback

forms completed by participants after each event are displayed on the right in the form of

a bar speedometer.

FInd ouT MoRe ABouT The pRoduCTAre you interested in testing the product for free? Then you can download the free version

on our website at www.mashzone.com. The website also contains video tutorials, a

mashup gallery with practical application examples for marketing, sales, HR, IT and

management. A special MashZone group within ARIS Community has already generated

considerable information exchange between users.

SAg_

ARIS

pot_

Mas

hzon

e_Sp

rSum

2010

_29J

un10


11


ARISSpotlight

The Gartner Group has estimated that

creating a BPM model of a company’s

processes—before any creative changes

are proposed—can take up to 41 percent of

BPM project time. ARISalign’s direct

contribution to improving processes and

efficiency can be measured in speed.

ARISalign’s white board collaborative work

environment encourages and stimulates

sharing. In ARISalign it’s very easy for

anyone to detail their everyday processes

as well as their structural connections to

other parts of the organization.

The ARISalign Social BPM Platform provides a shared modeling environment that helps management, BPM experts, and possibly

all employees in an organization to model their processes faster.

By using a virtual whiteboard to simultane-

ously collect details about company

processes from everyone in the organization,

BPM gurus, managers and company stake-

holders can get to the task of analyzing

these processes and making improvements

much more quickly than through traditional

means of collecting process information.

ARISalign is an online platform and managers

can give access to the whiteboard to as

many associates in a company as they

choose. Access is tiered according to the

expected contribution of each employee

or manager.

FIguRe 1: ARISalign Log-on Screen

When everyone in the organization is

responsible for inputting their own details,

working simultaneously on the ARISalign

whiteboard, these details are gathered

quickly from throughout the organization.

This dramatically reduces the time needed

by BPM experts to interview and observe

workers at each level throughout the organi-

zation. When they are ready to analyze the

model, they’re already ahead of a traditional

BPM schedule. They are also assured that

each level of the company has provided

their tasks and processes in great detail,

leading to a highly accurate model.

it iS what it iS: HOw SOcIAl BPM HElPS yOU cAPTURE yOUR cURRENT PROcESSES fASTER ANd MORE AccURATEly, SO yOU cAN IMPROVE yOUR BUSINESSBy Thomas Stoesser, Senior Product Manager, ARISalign, Software AG

12

ARISalign allows everyone with access, including front-line workers, to use the whiteboard

to detail the processes they use each day, and their connection points to management

and other departments.

Their contributions are listed and noted in areas where other team members can see

them, change, edit or comment on them, and add them to the model when approved.

Having an accurate and detailed model of an organization enables more meaningful

changes to be made that can boost efficiency and productivity.

More importantly, the speed with which ARISalign helps create a highly accurate model

allows BPM analysts to spend more of their budgeted time on improving processes,

boosting efficiency and increasing productivity.

ARISalign is completely free of charge, so take a look yourself and sign up on:

http:beta.arisalign.com

SAg_

ARIS

pot_

ARIS

alig

n_Sp

rSum

2010

_28J

un10


FIguRe 2: ARISalign Whiteboard and Process Model editor

13


webMethodsSpotlight

A major health products company

has a global network of dozens of

webMethods Brokers that transports

over 100 million of business-critical

messages per day to all corners of the

organization, allowing them to improve

and maintain exemplary customer

service levels.

A leading food retailer drives a

reactive, demand-driven replenishment

process by sending every single

point-of-sale transaction in real-time

from each of their 800 supermarkets

resulting in over ten million of

messages each day delivered through

their central webMethods Brokers.

This has allowed them to react much

more quickly to actual sales patterns

and reduce the inventory for each

product, thus creating more space

on the shelves for a greater selection

of products.

A large mobile phone company

exchanges a many thousands of

messages per hour with its suppliers

to ensure that components are

delivered to factory production lines

in time. webMethods Broker ensures

these processes run reliably 24 hours

per day.

For many years now webMethods Broker has proven to be a highly efficient and reliable

platform for demanding messaging applications. Enterprise-class features deliver the

extensive capabilities that organizations need to handle their growing messaging demands:

Competitive performance—up to tens of thousands of messages per second

State-of-the-art security with SSL encryption and authentication

High-availability through standard third-party clustering solutions

Quality of service to suit different applications—volatile or guaranteed

Tight integration with the rest of the webMethods suite

Standards-based (JMS) for integration in heterogeneous environments

Geographic scaling through easy-to-use Broker Territories

Organizational separation through configurable Territory Gateways

The introduction of webMethods Broker 8.0 in 2009 saw additional capabilities introduced in

the form of JMS policy-based clustering. This provides new options for availability and

scalability to JMS messaging.

What is JMs policy-based clustering?Policy-based clustering allows multiple Brokers to share load or add redundancy through

advanced capabilities of the webMethods Broker JMS client. This allows a single JMS client

to send messages to and receive messages from multiple Brokers according to a defined

policy. This is done transparently, so that the client application interacts with the JMS client

no differently than if it were communicating with a single Broker.

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

EntErpriSE-clASS MESSAging with wEbMEthodS brokEr: POlIcy-BASEd JMS clUSTERING BRINGS NEw OPTIONS fOR INcREASEd ScAlABIlITy ANd AVAIlABIlITyBy Jonathan Heywood, Manager, Product Management, Software AG

Figure 1: clustering policies

14

For the most demanding applications,

composite policies can be used to combine

scalability and availability policies.

can policy-based clustering be used For ha instead oF active-passive clustering?There are many facets to building a platform

for high-availability (HA). A key aspect is

guarding against message loss in the event

of hardware failure. webMethods Broker

guarantees message delivery, as long as

storage remains available. Traditionally, it

uses active-passive clustering with third-

party clustering software (e.g., Veritas or

HP ServiceGuard) in combination with

shared storage (e.g., a storage area network

or SAN) to ensure that messages are not

lost in the event of hardware or disk failure.

With the introduction of policy-based

clustering, active-passive clustering remains

the recommended HA mechanism for most

situations. However, in certain environments

where traditional HA solutions are not

practical, policy-based clustering using the

policies for availability can be a viable

alternative, albeit with a greater performance

penalty due to the redundancy being added.

In particular the multi-send best effort policy

provides a similar level of availability to

active-passive solutions. An inherent

characteristic of traditional clustering is a

temporary single-point-of-failure (SPOF)

after one node fails until such time as it

is replaced or repaired. This is the equiva-

lent of what the multi-send best effort

policy provides.

What is needed to use policy-based clustering?Firstly, the Broker server and associated JMS

client must be version 8.0 SP1 with Fix 1

or higher.

Secondly, policy-based clustering is only

available for JMS and not for the propri-

etary Broker client API.

For applications that use JNDI to establish

JMS connections, no change to the client

code is needed. It is sufficient to replace

the connection factories in JNDI with

sag_

wM

spot

_bro

ker8

.0_s

prsu

m20

10_2

8Jun

10


This all allows connection factories, policies

and destinations to be centrally managed

for a large-scale distributed deployment.

What are the policies?Policies control how messages are distributed

across the Brokers in a cluster. The policies are

only applied as messages are sent. At the

receiving side, messages are automatically

received from any Broker in the cluster. The

policies are separated into two categories:

policies for scalability

These policies allow message load to be

spread across multiple Brokers, thereby

increasing the message delivery capacity

above what would be possible with a

single Broker.

round-robin – Messages are distributed evenly across the Brokers in a defined sequence.

Weighted round-robin – Messages are distributed across the Brokers according to a defined weighting for each Broker.

random – Messages are distributed evenly, but randomly across the Brokers.

sticky – Messages are all sent to the first Broker until that becomes unavailable, after which messages are sent to the second Broker, and so on.

policies for availability

These policies send multiple copies of each

message, thereby introducing redundancy

within the messaging layer, which can be an

alternative to the traditional methods of

improving availability through redundancy in

the infrastructure layer. As with all policies,

these are transparent to the sending and

receiving application, so the receiver is only

passed a single copy of each message.

Multi-send best effort – Messages are sent to as many Brokers as possible, up to a configurable maximum, but always to at least one Broker.

Multi-send guaranteed – Messages are sent

to a configurable number of Brokers. The JMS

client ensures that the overall send only

succeeds if the message is successfully

sent to the defined number of Brokers.

•

•

•

•

•

•

clustered connection factories. For client

applications that directly create JMS con-

nection factories using the webMethods

JMS API (i.e., without using JNDI), changes

will be required to the connection factory

creation, to define additional Brokers and

the policy to be applied.

For webMethods Integration Server, policy-

based clustering is only available when

using JNDI lookup for the JMS alias, and not

when using the webMethods API. Policy-

based clustering can be used with the

following Integration Server versions:

7.1.2 with PubSub Fix 5 or higher

7.1.3

8.0 SP1 with PubSub Fix 1 or higher

What about using broker as a Jndi provider?webMethods Broker can be used as a JNDI

provider, as a repository for connection

factories and destinations. webMethods

Broker 7.1.2 and 8.0 are now both sup-

ported for use in production environments

as a JNDI provider for webMethods JMS

objects. For the sake of clarity, it is recom-

mended to define a separate Broker

(on the same Broker server) for JNDI use.

If multiple JNDI Brokers are placed in a

territory, then JNDI objects will automati-

cally be replicated between them.

What’s coMing next For WebMethods broker?webMethods Broker has evolved for over

10 years and has proven its maturity and

enterprise-class credentials in numerous

large organizations. The webMethods

Broker continues to be the core message

delivery component within the webMethods

Suite and its manageability, performance

and standards support will continue to be

enhanced further so as to keep up with the

most demanding enterprise requirements.

•

•

•

15


webMethodsSpotlight

(joined by Guido Laures VP, Global Consulting

Services Portfolio Management Software AG

and Madeline Bayliss VP, Strategic Partner-

ships Green Hat) and covers best practices

to make the upgrade process smooth and

successful. You can view the recorded

webinar at:

http://www.softwareag.com/corporate/

res/webinars/default.asp

UPGRAdING TO webMethodS VerSion 8.0By Jason Simpson, Director Product Management, Software AG

Are you ready to take advantage of the great new features of webMethods 8? Take a look at upgrading from your current

webMethods platform to the 8.0 release. webMethods 8.0 offers several new features to help organizations achieve their business

goals faster, such as unified, Eclipse-based development tools, additional management and administration tools across SOA,

BPM and Integration, and embedded business intelligence - bringing process analytics to knowledge workers.

It also includes context-aware, intelligent

portal-based applications for user-driven

“personal workspaces” and improved

scaling and clustering for the ESB. For a

high-level overview, we have created a

whiteboard movie which provides a useful

introduction. Take a look at:


images/sag_whiteboard5_tcm16-

54117.swf

There are many other ways

you can find out about

the webMethods

8.0 release.

We now have

available an online

webinar recording, plus

classroom training, online

documentation, upgrade

utilities, and a Global

Consulting Services

offerings. The one-

hour webinar is

hosted by myself

FIgurE 1: Overall Architecture View

SAg_

wM

Spot

_upg

rade

-wM

8_Sp

rSum

2010

_29J

un10


Along with all our content and product

enhancements, we have partnered with

GreenHat to provide automated testing.

The largest time spent in an upgrade

project is the testing, so that is why it is

critical to leverage good testing tools.

Find out more about this at GreenHat’s

dedicated web site section:

http://www.greenhat.com/softwareag/

Software AG’s Global Consulting Services

organization is also offering a free one-day

workshop to assist in defining upgrade

strategy, system audit, architecture review,

skills assessment, and gap analysis. To find

out more about all these tools and offerings

please download the Upgrade Services fact

sheet at:


images/SAg_upgrade_Services_FS_

Mar10-web_tcm16-65095.pdf

We also suggest you visit the Global

Consulting Services site at:


service/upgrade.asp

good luck with your upgrade!FIgurE 2: Lifecycle Efficiency

16


webMethodsSpotlight

delivery platforms and at both the business

process and service level.

Why SOA TeSTing?Some of the most common reasons why

SOA Testing is important to the success of

an SOA initiative are that it:

Establishes trust and predictability.

Helps manage exceptions and ensures service levels are met.

Improves reuse and agility as services are more reliable.

Helps reduce costs and improve quality.

ChAllengeS Of SOA TeSTingSOA introduces a number of challenges to

the world of testing, many of them com-

plex and difficult to control. These range

from loosely coupled services and lack of a

service user interface, to a “work-in-

progress” environment, external business

units and distributed development. Testing

needs to ensure continuous quality across

all services, endpoints and interfaces.

•

•

•

•

WhAT iS SOA TeSTing?Contrary to what one might have expected,

SOA Testing involves far more than just

applying traditional QA techniques and unit

test approaches to SOA. Enterprise SOA

applications are complex, modular, decen-

tralized and dynamic. Conventional testing

methods are mostly ineffective; no longer

can you “draw a box around it” or leave

testing to be a “last step before production”

project activity.

On a very simplistic level, an SOA imple-

ments business processes as a collection of

one or more services; individual services

can be added or tuned to quickly create

new business capabilities. This means that

to meet the demands of service reusability,

for example, service quality and trust need

to be established and re-verified throughout

the service lifecycle. SOA Testing needs an

end-to-end quality management strategy

to ensure business requirements are met.

This strategy should also address testing

for performance and security across

multiple integration layers, a variety of

SoA tESting: hOw cAN yOUR ORGANIzATION MAINTAIN qUAlITy IN A cOMPlEx ANd cONSTANTly chANGING ENVIRONMENT?By Justin Vaughan-Brown, Senior Director Communities, Software AG

Automated SOA Testing tools make it

possible to keep up with the dynamic

nature of an SOA.

hOW dOeS SOA TeSTing relATe TO SOA gOvernAnCe?Fundamental to SOA Governance are the

key elements of trust and credibility. SOA

Testing verifies that SOA assets meet the

functional and operational business require-

ments, and provides an actionable means

of enforcing policy within the testing

process. To maintain a continuous quality

focus across all SOA lifecycle stages, SOA

Testing tools need to be integrated with

SOA Governance tools.

Bringing SOA TeSTing And SOA gOvernAnCe inTO One WOrldThe integration between SOA Testing tool-

sets and Software AG’s CentraSite helps

ensure quality and compliance throughout

the service lifecycle—a key SOA Governance

requirement. This automated approach

allows you to:

Detect defects earlier and reduce costs.

Manage SOA Testing scripts across the service lifecycle.

Trigger lifecycle stages based on testing results.

Activate test procedures based on lifecycle state changes.

Store test results as part of the SOA asset metadata (see Diagram 1).

•

•

•

•

•

figure 1: Test results The UI extension of the detailed service view via the additional “SOA Test Status” tab, contains the test result summary

SAg_

WM

Spot

_SOA

Test

ing_

SprS

um20

10_2

8Jun

10


17


TechnologySpotlight

Rule Development

Rule Changes and Maintenance

Code and Test Generation, Documentation

Rule Harvesting(e.g., Data Structure,Logical Conditions)

Existing Natural Code Generated and Customized Natural Code

New Rules

Software AG is also providing Adabas

Administration and Monitoring with a

browser-based user interface. From one

place you will be able to manage tasks

based on your security permissions and

more quickly perform root-cause analysis.

InteroperabIlItyTechnology has always come along to break

down the barriers to exchanging informa-

tion, from middleware (Enterprise Applica-

tion Integration) to now service-oriented

technologies (Enterprise Service Bus) and

BPM. Now it’s time to make it less expen-

sive and less time consuming to execute.

This is why Software AG is creating tools for

Business Rule Development and Replication.

business rule Development Business applications today often contain hundreds of business rules coded in various

What’S Next fOR AdAbAS ANd NATURAl?By Guido Falkenberg, SVP Enterprise Transaction Systems, Software AG

Can you believe that some of you have been running adabas and natural for more than thirty years now? aren’t you tired of

hearing the “experts” claim the Mainframe and your applications are obsolete? they’ve been singing that tune for the past 30

years. So go ahead and feel a little smug, your mission critical applications are still running the business. Have no fear, because

adabas and natural will be with you for the next 30 years and beyond.

styles that are often not well documented. By capturing Natural application logic through graphical design, the creation and harvesting of business rules is simplified. Now those business rules can easily be turned into sharable services through auto-matic code and documentation generation. No programming needed (see Figure 1).

Data replication.

Business Process Management (BPM)

environments demand live operational

data to automate business processes

without creating data redundancies.

Software AG is working towards a solution

to replicate data from Adabas to BPM

environments thus eliminating the need

for long-running Extract Transform Load

(ETL) processes to move data into your

BPM or analytical systems.

FIgure 1: rule Development with graphical user Interface:The graphical design of application logic simplifies the creation and harvesting of business rules and automatically generates code and documentation. No programming needed.

eaSe oF uSeImagine new developers expressing

interest in learning Natural and Adabas.

Imagine being able to perform more tasks

in less time. NaturalONE took a large leap

forward by leveraging Eclipse to attract

new developers. To further eliminate the

skills shortage debate, Software AG is

lightening the load on developers and

DBAs through automation and improved

web-interfaces. For example,

Define code standards and automatically

check for compliance at development;

Simulate load for enhanced testing; and

Develop, maintain and modernize appli-

cations from Eclipse.

These are just a few of the product futures

for Natural that will improve code quality and

lower the cost of maintaining applications.

•

•

•

“With naturalone, we can

take full advantage of web-

based technologies for the

benefit of our customers,

plus attract new developers

from the universities.”

travel-BA.Sys GmbH & Co. KG

18

Sag_

teCH

Spot

_aDa

-nat

Visi

on_S

prSu

m20

10_2

8Jun

10


eFFICIenCy anD tranSparenCyManaging the lifecycle of applications and keeping systems operating problem-free are

some of the most time consuming tasks in today’s world of mixed technologies and

multi-tier architectures. It is also important to be able to define different environments

and lifecycle stages and automate transitions from development to test and then to

production. Software AG seeks to drive greater efficiency by automating tasks and simplifying

test and monitoring wherever possible to free up developer and DBA resources. Toward

this end, Software AG envisions an end-to-end monitoring solution that can monitor

infrastructure, application and business processes throughout the entire system lifecycle.

The next generation of monitoring tools for Natural and Adabas will provide robust

diagnostic capabilities that can quickly identify the root cause of a problem and pin-point

the location of the bottleneck. Measurements against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and

predictive analysis will support a complete view of operational behavior and predict

performance problems before they occur.

VISIon broCHureThese are just a few examples of what is in store for Adabas and Natural. Get more details

on the future direction of Adabas and Natural by downloading the “Adabas and Natural

Statement of Direction” brochure at: http://www.softwareag.com/corporate/images/

aDa_nat_Vision_bro_27May10_tcm16-66451.pdf

19


CommunitiesSpotlight

You can also be informed on what’s

happening with the Software AG products

directly—from the Software AG Product

Management and Solution Marketing teams.

Check out a range of announcements such

as new product releases, upgrades and

language packs. Would you like to also do

some networking in person? Look out for the

latest Software AG or user group events that

are featured in our “Latest News” section.

TAkE A fRESh lOOk AT Software ag CommunitieSBy Justin Vaughan-Brown, Senior Director Communities, Software AG

We are always looking to improve the experience for our customers and, over the past few months, we’ve been busy working

on an entirely new look for what were previously the “Developer Communities.” Renamed, “Technology Communities”, to reflect

their wider focus, you’ll see a number of enhancements such as a fresher, clearer layout with helpful resources icons, RSS feeds so

you can stay informed on all new product releases and latest community resources and improved navigation/links to useful sites.

One other new feature is the ability to view

latest product forum posts from within your

chosen Community web page. If you’d like

to read more, just click on the post to go to

the full discussion thread. We’ve also

expanded the social media side of the

Communities as well. You can share pages

from the Communities on most networking

and bookmarking sites such as Facebook,

LinkedIN, Digg, Twitter and delicious. Your

comments in the discussion forums can

also be shared on these sites. If you check

out your profile page, look out for new

social networking details that can be added.

If you are a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or

Xing member, why not share your details

with other forum members?

Check out the new Communities at:

http://communities.softwareag.com

We’re very interested in your feedback on

the new design, so please send any

comments to: technologycommunity@

softwareag.com

FiguRe 1: The New Dedicated Adabas Community and the Redesigned webMethods Community

One major change is that Adabas and

Natural now have their own dedicated

communities. This makes it easier to stay-

up-to date with the topics that you are

particularly interested in, perhaps new

releases such as NaturalONE and Data

Archiving for Adabas. Of course, you can

create as many RSS feeds as you wish if

you are, like many customers, using

both products.

SAg_

COM

Spot

_Com

mun

ities

_Spr

Sum

2010

_29J

un10


20

n e w s l e t t e r innovation - software...

Documents