{"id":7364,"date":"2021-11-29T12:13:53","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T11:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/?page_id=7364"},"modified":"2025-03-31T13:33:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T11:33:44","slug":"itzbund-en","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/en\/software-migration-2\/success-stories-2\/itzbund-en\/","title":{"rendered":"Successful BS2000 migration at ITZBund"},"content":{"rendered":"
\t\t\t

HOME<\/a> > SOFTWARE MIGRATION<\/a> > SUCCESS STORIES<\/a> > ITZBUND<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Logo<\/div><\/div>
\t\t\t

The Infor\u00adma\u00adti\u00adons\u00adtech\u00adnik\u00adzen\u00adtrum (ITZBund)<\/a> is the IT service provi\u00adder of the German Federal Govern\u00adment. The digita\u00adli\u00adsa\u00adtion of the public adminis\u00adtra\u00adtion in Germany is of great importance. The ITZBund has been commis\u00adsio\u00adned by the Federal Govern\u00adment to support the adminis\u00adtra\u00adtion with modern IT and to get them prepared for the digital future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\t\t\t

The effect of cold beer or other stimu\u00adla\u00adting drinks is something that everyone knows. We had an entirely diffe\u00adrent experi\u00adence in this field over the past year. However, for us it had nothing to do with any treat to drinks but hard work invol\u00adving the tool-based migration from BS2000 to Linux of a complex software project to manage alcoho\u00adlic bever\u00ada\u00adges. As usual, a series of new challenges arose from this. This report presents knowledge and experi\u00adence gained from the coope\u00adra\u00adtion between Infor\u00adma\u00adti\u00adons\u00adtech\u00adnik\u00adzen\u00adtrum Bund (ITZBund)<\/a> and us.<\/p>\n

New BIBER and ZEBRA Enclosures<\/h2>\n

ITZBund is the IT service provi\u00adder of the Federal Govern\u00adment. About 2,400 employees advise, support and ensure the ongoing opera\u00adtion as well as provi\u00adsion of infor\u00adma\u00adtion technology and speci\u00adally develo\u00adped IT soluti\u00adons. Two IT soluti\u00adons (so-called proce\u00addu\u00adres) assess\u00adment and collec\u00adtion of beer or alcohol taxes are expec\u00adted to be migra\u00adted in the project. The proce\u00addu\u00adres BIBER (beer tax calcu\u00adla\u00adtion) and ZEBRA (centra\u00adli\u00adsa\u00adtion of distil\u00adling under licence) have been histo\u00adri\u00adcally evolved and in service for more than 30 years. They produce appro\u00adxi\u00adm\u00adately 220,000 tax assess\u00adments with a tax revenue of 740 million euros every year. They were handled on BS2000 while using typical BS2000 tools. In terms of technology, both proce\u00addu\u00adres consist of 60 inter\u00adac\u00adtive online programs (IFG masks) control\u00adled by the transac\u00adtion monitor UTM and of 300 batch programs (COBOL), and for the control and adminis\u00adtra\u00adtion of which about 200 SDF jobs were used. The entire data is managed in approx. 220 SAM, ISAM and LEASY files.<\/p>\n

What you can do today\u2026<\/h2>\n

We have an in-house develo\u00adped toolbox named pecBOX (pro et con \u2013 Toolbox for Software Migration)<\/a>. All neces\u00adsary migration paths of the project could be supported with this toolbox. The follo\u00adwing table shows these paths and the migration tools used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Legacy system (BS2000)<\/th>\nTarget system (Linux)<\/th>\nMigration tool<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
COBOL<\/td>\nJava<\/td>\nCoJaC<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
JCL (SDF)<\/td>\nPerl<\/td>\nS2P<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Masks (IFG)<\/td>\nHTML, JavaScript<\/td>\nMaTriX<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Files (SAM)<\/td>\nLinux-Files<\/td>\nFiRe<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Files (ISAM, LEASY)<\/td>\nOracle<\/td>\nFiRe<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Middle\u00adware (UTM)<\/td>\nMidaS<\/td>\n\u2013<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The fact that quali\u00adta\u00adtively good migration tools shorten the project duration and trim the budget is nothing new. The project could only so be execu\u00adted within the speci\u00adfied, tightly schedu\u00adled timeframe. Even the popular saying \u201cready-to-use tools don\u2019t exist\u201d was found to be true. As it happened, CoJaC<\/a> and FiRe<\/a>, for example, had to learn \u201cbackward reading\u201d of LEASY files. We favour an exten\u00adsion of our tools over a manual adjus\u00adt\u00adment of the source code for these adapt\u00ada\u00adti\u00adons. In the early stages of the project, it cannot be estima\u00adted why and how often already conver\u00adted programs must be conver\u00adted all over again. A manual
\nadapt\u00ada\u00adtion would have to be repea\u00adted each time. Since all tools are based on descrip\u00adtive models and meta tools, they can be adapted within an accep\u00adta\u00adble timeframe. In addition, pecBOX includes system compon\u00adents for the target system. MidaS (Middle\u00adware as a Service) is an example of this. This tool develo\u00adped by us replaces the BS2000 transac\u00adtion monitor UTM in the target system. An early load test demons\u00adtra\u00adted that the perfor\u00admance of MidaS meets the practi\u00adcal requi\u00adre\u00adments and thus the use of paid standard software is not necessary.<\/p>\n

Knowledge is Power<\/h2>\n

The first phase of a migration project implies a tool-based reverse enginee\u00adring with our tool Flow Graph Manipu\u00adla\u00adtor. In that regard, special atten\u00adtion is paid to those aspects which bear risks for the migration. In the present case, these mainly occur\u00adred in data reposi\u00adtory. Accor\u00adding to the defined migration path, the ISAM and LEASY files were expec\u00adted to be migra\u00adted to Oracle tables by FiRe. During the analy\u00adsis, one distinc\u00adtive feature was identi\u00adfied: during program execu\u00adtion, the dynamic contents of the files are enriched by static contents (constants) from the programs and then output by a printer inter\u00adface. The encoding of data and source texts (inclu\u00adding constants) had to be unified even before the migration. This point did not only apply to an adapt\u00ada\u00adtion of FiRe but it also encom\u00adpas\u00adsed further aspects of the migration. The sooner such suppo\u00adsedly minor aspects are recog\u00adnised, the lower is the effort to remedy them since a confi\u00adgu\u00adra\u00adtion of the migration tools may alone be sufficient.<\/p>\n

Practice makes perfect<\/h2>\n

Follo\u00adwing a detailed analy\u00adsis and equip\u00adped with a full toolbox, one should assume that the real migration can be started straigh\u00adta\u00adway. Our experi\u00adence proved other\u00adwise. The combi\u00adna\u00adtion of tools and custo\u00admer requi\u00adre\u00adments for the first time posed unknown challenges. For this reason, a pilot migration was carried out before the overall project and that provi\u00added a verti\u00adcal section through the appli\u00adca\u00adtion (mask(s), program(s), jobs, data). This enabled us to once go through all migration paths and to use the tools and techno\u00adlo\u00adgies (at least partly). This proce\u00addure turned out to be useful since we gained important insight into many comple\u00adxi\u00adties. Thus, for example, we decided to outsource printing to a separate tool and not to map it via soluti\u00adons existing in the runtime systems. These would have not been suffi\u00adci\u00adent for the custo\u00ad\u00admer-speci\u00ad\u00adfic requi\u00adre\u00adments. As a result of this proce\u00addure, additio\u00adnal requi\u00adre\u00adments were identi\u00adfied and imple\u00admen\u00adted before the real migration. This reduced the risk of having to carry out adapt\u00ada\u00adtion of the tools besides the task of the migration.<\/p>\n

Divide et impera<\/h2>\n

The chall\u00adenge of a migration project that reflects all facets of legacy systems is to reduce the comple\u00adxity of the migration and test proces\u00adses. This was taken into account in the present project by our partner ITZBund by dividing the appli\u00adca\u00adtion into indivi\u00addual packa\u00adges. This division was based on (business) proces\u00adses which were meaningfully grouped into packa\u00adges. The thus possi\u00adble paral\u00adle\u00adli\u00adsa\u00adtion of migration and test offered many benefits in the project. An essen\u00adtial element was also the commu\u00adni\u00adca\u00adtion with the ITZBund experts. They know their proces\u00adses and could provide valid test data. This data and the defined proces\u00adses also offered the possi\u00adbi\u00adlity of automa\u00adtion. For this, the proces\u00adses and the suita\u00adble data were standar\u00addi\u00adsed and trans\u00adfer\u00adred to test cases which enorm\u00adously reduced the effort requi\u00adred for the test. The division into indivi\u00addual packa\u00adges led to the fact that migration and test were manageable at any time and that an overview of the project progress was always available.<\/p>\n

You live and learn<\/h2>\n

The project was switched into produc\u00adtive opera\u00adti\u00adons on 22 August 2016. This project again proved that the tool-based approach practi\u00adsed by us works well. This applies in parti\u00adcu\u00adlar to automa\u00adted language conver\u00adsion from COBOL to Java with the CoJaC tool. Techno\u00adlo\u00adgies and tools can be as fully develo\u00adped and tested as you like, every migration project brings in new challenges. This also means a not at all insigni\u00adfi\u00adcant effort for our project partner that ITZBund provi\u00added through exper\u00adtise and active coope\u00adra\u00adtion \u2013 what could be an example for many others. Only such a close colla\u00adbo\u00adra\u00adtion can lead migration projects to great success.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>

\t\t\t

<\/a> Success Story: \u201cSuccessful BS2000 Migration at ITZBund<\/span><\/span>\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div>

\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tBACK TO OUR SUCCESS STORIES<\/b>\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HOME > SOFTWARE MIGRATION > SUCCESS STORIES > ITZBUND<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":7352,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7364","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-thumb"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7364\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entw.proetcon.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}