Change Management Solutions for CA Gen Benefits

Benefits
GuardIEn automates ALL of your development,
change management and build management
processes:
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Increases Developer Productivity .
Enhanced version control for AllFusion Gen objects,
sophisticated migration between models, automated
model comparisons and change tracking plus
automated build management provide significant
increases in developer productivity.
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Improves System Quality. Automated
system updating facilities eliminate the errors
typically
associated
Change Management Solutions for CA Gen
management processes.
GuardIEn provides comprehensive version control, model management
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and configuration management tools specifically designed for CA Gen.
GuardIEn enables organizations to effectively manage complex,
enterprise-wide development activities throughout the entire life-cycle
from initial design to full implementation and maintenance.
Before model-based development tools were available, the controlled
items were program source code, such as COBOL and C. With CA Gen,
the true source of the system is no longer the program code, but the
models from which the code is generated. Changes to the application are
with
manual
change
Delivers Error-Free Builds. Integrated
change control and impact analysis tools ensure that
all the necessary tasks are performed to provide
error-free updates to your AllFusion Gen systems.
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Accelerates Time-to-Market. In addition to
controlling the movement of code through the lifecycle, GuardIEn supports every stage of the
development project. Integrated impact analysis and
audit trails result in faster identification of problems,
reducing development and maintenance costs.
GuardIEn significantly reduces development time
made to the CA Gen model, and therefore controls are applied to the
and speeds time-to-market by automating build
models instead of to the program source code.
management tasks such as object migration, code
generation and installation.
Designed specifically for CA Gen, GuardIEn understands how to version
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control CA Gen objects, migrate between models, automate impact
Standardises Working Practices. GuardIEn
encourages the use of standard working practices by
analysis, execute the code generators and automate the installation of
allowing organisations to define, control and
generated code.
automate their development and build management
processes.
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Integrates with leading CCM Tools.
GuardIEn integrates with the leading enterprise
Change and Configuration Management tools to
enable AllFusion Gen projects to utilise corporate
standard production updating tools and procedures.
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Delivers Standards Compliance. GuardIEn
can help development projects achieve compliance
with industry standards in QA and software
configuration management, for example CMM or ISO
9000.
Integrated Change and Version Control
Model Management
Without a clear definition of the changes that have been applied to the
GuardIEn provides comprehensive support for managing the CA Gen
models, it is difficult to accurately update the target system, often
models. Object Migrations are automated by GuardIEn to reduce the
resulting in the need to re-generate and re-implement the entire
overhead of administering the models and ensure that the migrations
application. The management of changes to the application is
are performed accurately.
therefore an essential part of automating the implementation process.
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Rules Based Migration.
The model architecture is defined
Integrated Change Control. GuardIEn contains an integrated
using a rules-based approach. The migration rules specify the points
change control module that enables the central definition of change
in the life-cycle that indicate that a migration is required, the pre-
requests and, vitally, the association of the change requests to
conditions and post-conditions for the migration and which model or
changed objects.
models are to be targeted.
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Automated Versioning.
Each model object is individually
versioned, which allows it to be tracked by system release, as well as
by its progress through the development life-cycle. Versioning of CA
Gen objects is automatically performed by the Upload Assistant, which
Multiple Development Models
Parallel Release Development
Multiple Model Streams
Component Based Development
detects the objects that have been changed in the CA Gen
encyclopaedia. The Upload Assistant establishes the version of the
object and then automatically adds the new or changed object into the
content of the change request. This removes the possibility that a
change to an object is forgotten.
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Customised Process. The change request life-cycles can be
defined by each project, with support for separate life-cycles for each
type of change request, for example, new development, emergency
GuardIEn’s migration rules provide great flexibility, enabling support
fixes or component changes.
for all of the commonly used model architectures. GuardIEn supports
cross-encyclopaedia migrations and includes the ability to
synchronise host and client/server models.
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Enabling Object Checking.
Summary
GuardIEn performs enabling
object checking, automatically adding required objects into the
migration. This greatly reduces the number of migration failures since
missing enabling objects are the most common reason why a migrate
does not succeed.
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Specification Migrate. For Component Based Development
projects, GuardIEn provides a “specification migrate” facility that will
automatically convert an implementation action block into a
specification as part of the migration from the development model to
specification and catalog models, removing the need to manually
convert the action block.
Release Management
Impact Analysis
GuardIEn provides facilities that enable users to scope and plan the
Integrated impact analysis features are available to provide rapid and
launch of changes into a “system release”. Multiple system releases
effective information extracted directly from the CA Gen Encyclopedia.
are defined as either independent releases, or linked as a hierarchy of
Examples include:
releases, to enable the tracking of changes between releases.
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when an object was last changed and by whom
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what uses an object and what objects it uses
one release concurrently.
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subsets that contain an object
Updates to a release are scoped using a “release pack”, which is a
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comparison of action diagrams between models
collection of one or more GuardIEn change requests. The release pack
GuardIEn provides powerful cross-model impact analysis that is
is used as the basis for authorising the promotion of changes to a
critical to managing a multi-model development environment. This is
controlled environment. The release pack can also be used to
especially useful for Component Based Development where an
establish synchronisation with a package of changes in an external
application might be distributed across many component and
CCM tool.
application models.
GuardIEn offers powerful features to support parallel development of
system releases, enabling development teams to work on more than
External Objects
System Updating and Build Management
CA Gen applications are increasing their use of external objects. These
GuardIEn automates the implementation of changed objects into a
all form part of the final application but importantly, are not stored
target environment, including the updating of the executable system.
within the CA Gen encyclopaedia. XOS is a module in GuardIEn that
The scope of the system update is the GuardIEn release pack which
enables you to manage these external objects.
defines the objects that are to be included in the new release of the
Define it All. XOS is tightly integrated with GuardIEn, allowing
system. The release pack is first checked for consistency, for example
the same flexibility in object and life-cycle definition to be applied to
to prevent accidental migration of untested or unauthorised objects
external objects. All external objects that you need to control can be
into the controlled environment. Once GuardIEn has checked the
defined and managed using XOS, for example, external action blocks,
release pack, a background task is executed to perform all of the steps
bitmaps, icons, OLE files, HTML pages, java script, JCL, scripts,
required to build the new release of the system. The steps required to
documentation and help files.
implement a system will vary between organisations. Typical steps
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See it All. XOS stores the associations between external objects
might include:
and other objects (both CA Gen and other externals). This allows
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Backup production model objects.
GuardIEn’s impact analysis tools to provide a complete picture that
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Migrate new and changed objects to controlled model(s).
extends, significantly, beyond the boundaries of the CA Gen model,
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Migrate external objects.
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Regenerate RI triggers.
meta-model that defines the associations between the external
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Compile external action blocks.
objects can be customised to suit your own requirements and the
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Execute CA Gen code generators.
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Install source code (i.e. compile, link-edit and bind).
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Interface to external CCM or production updating systems.
speeding the development process and ensuring changes are carried
out in an ordered fashion to all objects affected by the change. The
parsing technology that automatically derives the associations from
the external object source code can also be adapted to suit specific
customer requirements.
GuardIEn executes the steps using a series of linked background
tasks. It executes each step, checks the results and if the step was
successful, automatically moves on to the next step. This allows the
update to be performed overnight without any intervention.
GuardIEn’s “install anywhere” technology allows the generated code
to be installed on a different platform to the encyclopaedia. For
example, installation can be automated on multiple OS/390, UNIX and
Windows target platforms from any CA Gen host and client/server
encyclopaedia platform.
The figure below provides an example of how the GuardIEn system
updating process can operate. The changed objects are migrated to a
controlled acceptance model. The acceptance model can be secured
so that only GuardIEn has access to it. The code is then re-generated
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Control it All. XOS uses GuardIEn’s Change Management and
and installed into acceptance to guarantee model and source code
System Updating facilities to automate the implementation of external
synchronisation. Once acceptance testing is complete, the changes
objects into each major stage in the development process (e.g.
can be implemented into production followed by a migrate to
Development, Integration Test, Acceptance Test, Production).
synchronise the production model with the production code.
Bitmaps, icons, OLE files and other external objects can be checked
out at the same time as the CA Gen subset. Integrity checks similar to
those in CA Gen ensure that conflicting changes cannot be made to
the external object whilst it is checked out.
Using terminology that CA Gen users will be familiar with, external
objects are ‘migrated' across each stage and then implemented as
appropriate for each type of object in a controlled fashion,
synchronised with migration and implementation of the CA Gen
objects.
Customers
Task Assistant
GuardIEn contains an integrated Task Assistant that manages CA Gen
GuardIEn is used by thousands of developers at leading CA Gen sites
activities as background tasks.
world-wide. They use GuardIEn as a critical component of their CA
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Eliminate Contention. Sophisticated task dispatching software
Gen development infrastructure.
ensures that the overall CA Gen Encyclopaedia workload is scheduled
Swiss Federal Railways have used GuardIEn since 1995. "We can now
according to defined priorities, avoiding encyclopaedia and database
identify the precise changes, scope them into a change request and
the integrated system update processing ensures that the changes
contention.
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Faster Response Times.
This maximizes encyclopaedia
are correctly implemented. This has resulted in a large reduction in
performance and availability of this critical resource. The task
effort for both the project teams and the support staff." states Martin
management software can also be used for ad-hoc development tasks
Reeves of Swiss Federal Railways.
like downloads, uploads and code generation to ensure that all
Another example is the integration between GuardIEn and enterprise
encyclopaedia activities are managed efficiently.
CCM tools, for example CA’s Endevor. ING is a financial services group
located in over 65 countries. Since 1993 they have been using CA Gen
Subset Assistant
to develop mission critical applications. They have also standardized
The Subset Assistant simplifies the process of subset definition,
on CA’s Endevor for managing the implementation of OS/390
significantly reducing the time and effort associated with subsetting.
applications. "We make extensive use of Endevor to manage the
Powerful scoping tools. The Subset Assistant makes it easy to
implementation of applications on OS/390. Prior to the introduction of
select the required objects. Examples include an object list with full
GuardIEn, we relied on manual interfaces which were not satisfactory
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wild card selection, selection based on associations to other objects, a
from a control perspective. Integrating CA Gen with Endevor was
'when changed' list and a powerful “wizard” that automates the
essential for us and GuardIEn has provided us with a much needed
selection of objects required to perform a task, for example, delete an
capability." comments Bert Landsmeer of ING.
object.
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No more unexpected downgrades.
The current subset
protection for an object is displayed alongside the object giving an
instant warning if the object is already checked out in another subset.
You can also easily find out which subset contains the protected
objects.
Company Background
Information Engineering Technology (IET) is a UK based company
with over a decade's experience in developing tools to specifically
complement CA Gen.
IET is a Computer Associates Solution Partner, and GuardIEn is
certified “ca smart” for use with CA Gen.
For more information, call
+44 1225 863060
e-mail [email protected],
or visit us at www.iet.co.uk
©2008 Information Engineering Technology Ltd. Duckmead House, Farleigh Wick, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom.
GuardIEn is a trademark of IET. All other trademarks, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.