spring – summer 2010 - software ag
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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%
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3
TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
7
TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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
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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.
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
TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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
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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.
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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.
11
TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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
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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
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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.
FIguRe 2: ARISalign Whiteboard and Process Model editor
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TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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:
http://www.softwareag.com/corporate/
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
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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:
http://www.softwareag.com/corporate/
images/SAg_upgrade_Services_FS_
Mar10-web_tcm16-65095.pdf
We also suggest you visit the Global
Consulting Services site at:
http://www.softwareag.com/corporate/
service/upgrade.asp
good luck with your upgrade!FIgurE 2: Lifecycle Efficiency
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TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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.
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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).
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figure 1: Test results The UI extension of the detailed service view via the additional “SOA Test Status” tab, contains the test result summary
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TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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.
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“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
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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
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TECHniquesINNOVATION | SPRING – SUMMER 2010 EdITION
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.
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