Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Patent
1997-01-21
1998-12-01
Black, Thomas G.
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
707 1, 707 2, 707 3, 707 4, 395706, 395707, 434118, 434 1, 345326, 345338, G06F 1730
Patent
active
058452893
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
1 BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method allowing and guiding the integration and migration of Business Applications (BA) executed on a data processing system into modern environments based on object-oriented technology (OOT). In particular the present invention relates to a method of generating an object-oriented (OO) access to BAs executed on a data processing system where said BAs do not correspond to the paradigm of object-orientation and are assumed to follow conventional non-OO principles.
1.2 Description and Disadvantages of Prior Art
Exploiters of information technology as well as information technology itself are confronted with a new dimension of flexibility and adaptability challenges for software supporting and controlling their business. Of course the software development techniques are confronted with these requirements too. On one hand business initiatives are the creators of these demands on the other hand information technologies themselves are the driving forces.
Companies are coping with new and changing market requirements. Improved customer services and time-to-market are key differentiators. Globalization of markets, organizational changes like decentralization, new cooperations require new business structures and concepts. As an answer to these challenges companies are attempting to re-engineer the underlying business processes to a serious extend. Business application software encompassing a huge spectrum of different application types, like Online Transaction Processing Applications (OLTP), data base applications etc., has an important supporting and enabling element in this arena it has to follow these tracks. The situation is even worse as information technologies themselves undergo drastic changes by offering new technologies like Client/Server, multi-media and object-oriented (OO) technologies.
The attempt to integrate, to migrate or to adapt existing BAs to these changes in general and to OOT in specific, as OOT becomes more and more important and is believed to be the unifying approach for accessing other types of new technology, various approaches are known.
If the origins of a given application are dated back many years and sometimes even more than a decade and if technologies have been subject of dramatic evolution, a first impulse might suggest to abandon these types of legacy applications, as an adaptation with respect to the new technologies like client/server concepts etc., these applications haven't been prepared for, seems hopeless. No doubt that this kind of approach might be reasonable in certain situations. The decision to "throw away" a legacy application often is a hasty response. Searching for alternatives allowing to "reuse" the legacy applications is worthwhile as they contain valuable knowledge on the business they are supporting. Many person-years would have to be spent for their re-implementation. Also as many companies rely in a vivid sense on their business supporting applications such discontinuities may not be acceptable and more evolutionary approaches may be favorable instead.
Modernization of legacy applications by restructuring could be an alternative attitude. As a result this concept often requires great investment in the old application itself whereas the "visible" effects of modern technologies are very modest compared to the overall effort. Sometimes restructuring an application actually led to a completely new implementation. If on the other hand this "hidden" re-implementation is to be avoided typically one is limited with respect to the freedom of designing the characteristics of the new application structure.
Especially if an application should be made available to object-oriented environments a technique called "wrapping" is available. Wrapping of existing applications means to encapsulate an application in one or a series of objects offering the application's activities as object methods. As this kind of approach is primarily based on the given application implementation this lea
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Journal of Object--Oriented Programming, vol. 5, No. 1, Mar. 1992, pp. 31-42, XP 000563080, Graham, "Migration Using SOMA: A Semantically Rich Method of Object--Oriented Analysis".
Baumeister Sascha
Beisiegel Michael
Duscher Reinhard
Black Thomas G.
Duffield Edward H.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Mizrahi Diane D.
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