PowerHouse to PowerHouse Migration

If you are dealing with a soon-to-be obsolete or outdated platform, then business continuity is a concern that can be resolved by rehosting your PowerHouse 4GL applications to another more modern platform such as UNIX, Linux or Windows.

What's more, this platform migration may just be a step on your modernization journey, one where consolidation and standardization can be performed before you begin other modernization initiatives. Speedware can provide the automated tools and the project management experience to deliver a successful migration project.

Platform Migration Challenges

As with most IT environments, a PowerHouse application environment can present unique challenges during migration. For example:

• All code that references operating-system commands or intrinsics or that calls external 3GLs must be replaced by equivalent functionality on the target OS.
  
  
• JCL code that refers to PowerHouse QUICK, QTP or QUIZ programs must be converted to use a batch scripting language supported by the target OS, and must also be adapted to work with the differences of the PowerHouse 4GL language on UNIX or Windows.
  
  
• Migrating to a modern RDBMS usually requires application code changes. Most PowerHouse code for data access must be modified to use commands suitable for relational database access.
• When PowerHouse 4GL applications access databases or files that are also accessed by other languages like COBOL or C, some difficulties are likely be encountered. Similarly, if third-party utilities access the same databases or files, some incompatibilities may arise, particularly if the third-party utility is replaced as part of the system transition.

Platform Migration Solutions

Speedware possesses the tools, the expertise and the experience to help PowerHouse 4GL customers with their platform migration needs, regardless of how simple or complicated they turn out to be. Working with Cognos customers, Speedware has developed a proven platform migration methodology and has created a code analysis and migration toolset to help estimate the effort of a platform migration project, identify early important migration challenges and increase the level of automation of required code modification. Speedware's employees have been trained by Cognos on the distinctive features of PowerHouse 4GL. This knowledge is complemented by Speedware's own tools, solutions and methodologies based on real experience in helping PowerHouse 4GL customers rehost their applications to other platforms such as UNIX, Linux and Windows.

Speedware has unique expertise in dealing with the challenges encountered with the co-existence of PowerHouse 4GL applications and other languages like COBOL and third-party utilities. Speedware possesses the experience to handle these challenges, as most of our PowerHouse 4GL platform migration projects included features like these. With 3GLs, Speedware devised a methodology and created a set of guidelines and tools to bridge the gap between language requirements and environment specifics.

Yes, I want more information on PowerHouse platform migrations.