Do you know what ADSplus portability offers you?

In talking with a wide range of customers we have started to notice an interesting phenomenon. While our ADSplus customers are fully aware of the value of their ADSplus applications, many have not truly recognized the incredible business advantage that they already have with the cross-platform portability features of ADSplus.

Thousands Of Developers, Millions Of Programs

Since its introduction in 1980, ADSplus – the tool suite for generating applications from Delta Software Technology – has been widely adopted by many of the world’s leading organizations. ADSplus has also been referred to as “Delta ADS”, “Delta COBOL”, or simply as “Delta” or “ADS”.

A recent customer survey confirmed that over the past 25+ years ADSplus has been used by more than 10,000 developers to develop literally millions of application programs. We leave it up to you to guess how many millions of lines of COBOL and PL/1 generated by ADSplus are running in production (our estimate is that well over one thousand million lines of code are in production!)

The Way “IT” Was

At this point let’s step back in time and look at the IT landscape as it was at the start of the 1980s. There were lots of mainframe platforms. IBM CICS was just one TP monitor among many. It was not at all clear which platform vendors were going to “win”. Most data was in flat or indexed files. CODASYL databases were considered leading edge and SQL was still in the future.

Because of the diverse range of platforms in use at that time, it was clear to Delta as a developer of generator systems that platform independence must be a critical aspect in the original design of ADSplus. ADSplus should help our customers to develop applications that are totally independent of the deployment platform. In other words, the ADSplus application must be specified at the logical level and the target-specific COBOL or PL/1 code is then 100% generated for the selected deployment platforms currently being used.

This original ADSplus design concept of a logical specification of the application with the target-specific code being 100% generated remains a defining quality of all Delta products. Why should developers have to spend their time implementing the same technical details again and again, when it is just as good – or even better – to do these things automatically?

Changing Platforms

As new platforms were introduced over the years the ADSplus applications could be simply moved to the new technology. All that was needed was to regenerate the applications for the new target platform. This key aspect of ADSplus was successfully used by large numbers of customers to smoothly manage their transition from flat files through hierarchal or CODASYL database into SQL relational databases.

In the same way applications developed using a host-based user interface could be simply regenerated to use a PC or UNIX-based front-end system.

Downsizing And Rightsizing

The cross-platform portability of ADSplus again showed its value when applications first started to be moved off the host mainframe environments in the first wave of downsizing and rightsizing. The applications were first moved onto UNIX platforms, with many then subsequently being moved again to the Windows platform.

The cross-platform portability of ADSplus has allowed a large number of our customers to move their large mission critical applications from one platform to another with minimal effort.

ISVs Profit From Portability

The cross-platform portability of ADSplus was of particular benefit to independent software vendors who wanted to develop standard packages and then sell the same application across different platforms. Many commercial packages were developed in this way. One notable example is of a banking system developed in ADSplus and cross-generated for 10 different platforms. The developers worked with a single source and all 10 versions could be generated in parallel. For this customer the cross-platform portability of ADSplus is a major factor in their long-term success in their market.

Fewer Platforms

In the past 10 years the IT infrastructure market has rapidly consolidated. There are now far fewer platforms and infrastructure products in general use. For example, IBM z/OS CICS is by far the leading mainframe platform, whereas Oracle is by far the leading database in the UNIX world.

A direct result of the consolidation of the different technical platforms is that ADSplus applications are ported to new platforms less often. Many developers and development managers have therefore tended to forget that they already have the ability to quickly, simply and securely move their ADSplus applications to new platforms.

(Re)Discover A Treasure Chest Of Valuable Features

We therefore want to remind all ADSplus customers of the treasure that you have in your existing ADSplus applications. You have already “won the jackpot!”

ADSplus is available today for a broad range of target platforms. You can move your applications from your current platform to a new platform with a simple regeneration. Literally hundreds of these migration projects have been completed successfully by ADSplus customers over the years. An impressive example of this is our case study on the projects at Datenzentrale Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

The Way “IT” Is

Today’s IT world may have fewer platforms to choose from, but that does not mean that changing platforms is no longer relevant. In fact the opposite is true: the focus is now on cost reduction for existing applications, while at the same time opening-up new business opportunities. The cross-platform portability of ADSplus helps you to profit in both scenarios.

• Cost Reduction – Where cost reduction for an existing mainframe environment is a key goal then your IBM, Bull, Unisys or other mainframe applications can be easily ported to a more economical LINUX platform. This can reduce or avoid totally the ongoing costs for the mainframe environment. Some of our customers have doubted the feasibility of a migration because they had used the ADSplus macro language to in effect develop their own application generators. But even in such cases, using ADSplus platform migrations are without risk.
• New Architectures – In many modernization projects it is not enough to simply move the existing ADSplus application to a new deployment platform. Today’s projects involve SOA, ESBs, Web services, Portals and other new technologies. The unlimited portability of ADSplus helps you to move all, or selected parts, of your ADSplus applications to new platforms and technologies. All for minimal effort and with the security of knowing that your applications are ideally equipped to meet whatever the future holds.

Would You Like to Know More?

With our in-depth experience we can optimally support you in planning and implementation your migration and modernization projects. Why not get in touch and rediscover the treasure you already have with the cross-platform portability of your ADSplus applications.