The Great Renewal

by David Baum

In less than five years, Web integration of legacy information systems has gone from an interesting technology experiment to a business necessity. According to a survey conducted by Booz-Allen & Hamilton for The Economist, almost all of 600 CEOs who were interviewed said they expect the Internet to reshape the global marketplace by 2001. And more than 60 percent of these CEOs believe the Internet will help their companies achieve their strategic goals by improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs, globalizing operations, fostering innovation, and speeding time to market.

This directive has put legacy integration technologies in the limelight, as companies seek to move their host-based application assets into the Internet Age. WebFOCUS supplies a comprehensive upgrade path for both FOCUS and non-FOCUS users, bringing the ubiquity and ease of use of Web technologies to established business systems. It was designed not only to add Web query and reporting capabilities to FOCUS systems, but to extend all types of legacy systems, preserving the investments companies have made in host-based technologies.

"Whereas much discussion in the past revolved around legacy 'migration' onto new platforms and architectures, IT managers will now be more interested in investing development resources in integration and expansion strategies," notes Liz Barnett of Giga Information Group, an IT research and strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass (www.giga-web.com). "Legacy applications, once renovated, must participate in the evolving distributed systems infrastructure. Integration with the Web will be the highest priority." (See the Liz Barnett interview in this issue.)

Transferring character-based applications and paper-based reporting to the Web is an ideal way to achieve the type of renovation Barnett is referring to. "While many companies are investing in new e-commerce applications, many of their core business transactions currently reside, and will continue to reside, on legacy platforms," she adds.

WebFOCUS unlocks the value in these legacy systems without jettisoning existing applications, reports, and enterprise data sources – or undergoing an expensive conversion process. While some companies will justify migration projects in terms of maintenance or deployment cost savings, Barnett believes most firms will not undertake the massive effort that an outright migration involves. "Those vendors and systems integrators that can bridge the gap between legacy technologies and new Internet-based development will be best positioned to serve their customers," she says.

Why Move to Web-Based Applications?

There are many compelling reasons to re-engineer host-based business processes and operations to work with Web technologies. Web applications are rapidly developed, highly extensible and easily deployed via URLs. These thin-client applications can be centrally administered and, when properly architected, special desktop software is not required on users' PCs. Finally, because browser-based applications are so easy to use, little or no training is required.

As Milton Hershey School learned, Web-based applications and business processes offer compelling advantages both for end users and the IT people who support them (see related story in this issue). Web users can directly access information they need – without assistance or delays – rather than calling an administrator or waiting for a printed report. Instead of searching hard-copy reports, they can discover information quickly through online interaction, drilling-down into Web reports and associated electronic files like Excel spreadsheets. Best of all, users get the information faster – when they need it – thanks to electronic report distribution and electronic report thresholds, which alert users to reports that contain things they need to know.

Reducing Complexity, Minimizing Costs

Web conversion issues for legacy systems and applications can be highly complex and vary considerably from project to project. Some examples include data reformatting or database denormalization (needed to accommodate SQL-based Web tools); re-writing of complex reports; metadata creation; platform conversion issues; and replicating mainframe-strength security in non-mainframe environments. When all these issues are considered, WebFOCUS offers clear advantages over competitive products, which typically are SQL-based.

Relational and nonrelational data structures can all remain intact and in place, without any reformatting. By contrast, most other Web reporting products require the creation of relational structures for all data, because these products cannot directly access legacy data. Furthermore, if the target data is normalized, it will have to be denormalized for effective reporting in SQL. These other Web solutions typically require a data conversion to put the legacy reporting structures into a database that can be directly accessed by the reporting tools. Not so with WebFOCUS. It will automatically generate native optimized code for each individual data source, including ABAP for SAP and optimized SQL for each of the major relational databases. Competing products are limited to UNIX or Windows NT platforms, and they can only generate SQL for queries and reports. WebFOCUS offers a standard operating environment that is portable among 80 databases, ERP systems, and transaction systems on 35 computing platforms.

There are also dramatic cost differences between WebFOCUS and other Web reporting products. Competing Web solutions generally impose per-seat or per-user prices. Furthermore, they require client-side software like browser plug-ins or report viewers. WebFOCUS is a server-side technology that supports true thin clients by delivering HTML to browser users. It is priced by machine category and allows unlimited numbers of users for HTML-based applications.

Rewriting FOCUS Reports for the Web

FOCUS users, in particular, obtain many benefits from WebFOCUS since it preserves existing FOCUS reports and applications with only minor to moderate recoding-and no need to migrate legacy applications or data to new platforms. FOCUS reports without global variables or operating system commands, for example, are extremely simple to convert to WebFOCUS. Reports containing global variables, operating system commands, or Dialog Manager prompts may need partial rewrites, but none of it is difficult for FOCUS programmers.

FOCUS users frequently have a sizeable investment in complex, highly summarized reports of all kinds. Choosing a Web integration product other than FOCUS mandates a total re-write of character-based FOCUS reporting systems. Often this rewrite must be matched by complex denormalization of the product's relational tables in order to replicate sophisticated FOCUS reports with SQL syntax, and to assure acceptable performance.

Host-based FOCUS reports are portable to WebFOCUS with only minor to moderate changes, and WebFOCUS includes rapid application development tools to assist in this process.

For example, the WebFOCUS Publish tool can read FOCUS reports with Dialog Manager prompts and then dynamically generate new HTML screens with the same prompts for parameterized reporting.

With other solutions, the costs become unpredictable because the process is much more complex. Code will have to be written from scratch, and many things can affect the amount of time a consultant will need to spend on the conversion. Database modeling and denormalization may be necessary to replicate the summary levels or the performance of individual FOCUS reports.

The greatest savings in implementation consulting costs are realized with the most complex FOCUS procedures, such as extended matrix reports. These can be extremely difficult to replicate using SQL syntax and relational tables.

Finally, competing Web reporting solutions generally require their own metadata, which must be created for other data sources, including FOCUS. By contrast, all Information Builders technology shares the same cross-platform metadata. Because WebFOCUS can reuse the FOCUS metadata, customers can avoid all of those conversion costs. Assuming consulting costs of $1,000 per day, to convert a moderately complex database would take 30 days at a cost of $30,000. WebFOCUS can save this entire consulting expense, plus the additional cost of buying the database required by a competing product.

Efficient Deployment Architecture

Many Web reporting solutions return large answer sets to users' PCs for formatting – a poor architectural design that can adversely affect network performance. Also, because other Web solutions don't generate HTML dynamically, programmers must write this capability in Java, PERL or REXX.

WebFOCUS avoids these drawbacks completely. All processing occurs on the server. The result is minimized network traffic, with only the pre-processed answer sets returned to the browser. No additional formatting or processing is necessary on the client. Dynamic HTML generation makes WebFOCUS a true thin-client solution that requires no local report formatting, browser plug-ins, or report viewers. It gets information to individual users in formats they can use, including HTML, Excel, or PDF files. Other vendors require Java or plug-ins to deploy and run reports on PCs. Plug-ins do not respect the true thin-client Web paradigm and they can complicate application management and deployment.

Tuning, Management, and Administration

WebFOCUS' use of non-persistent connections means that WebFOCUS applications can support unlimited number of users. The WebFOCUS Web server provides various levels of security, including SSL support with RSA encryption, direct integration of existing mainframe security (like RACF or Top Secret), and IP address screening.

"Killer queries" and complex reports can severely tax any reporting system. WebFOCUS with its companion technologies handles these jobs well, with its rich 4GL syntax, extended matrix reporting features, host-based processing, and auditability. Other solutions handle these complex reports poorly or can't do them at all. Examples include counting and correlating subqueries, ranking, and extended matrix reporting.

WebFOCUS is not just a Web reporting system. It is a complete, enterprise-strength reporting environment with features that many other solutions do not even offer:

Resource Governor protects enterprise systems from runaway queries or excessive usage.

Resource Analyzer combines usage-based performance analysis with in-depth management reporting to show how reports utilize enterprise data and resources.

Report Broker automates scheduled reporting, bursting, and distribution, and supports programmable alerts, lowering administrative costs and ensuring fast information delivery.

Mobile Desktop lets remote users plug into enterprise data via the Internet, then analyze it offline.

The WebFOCUS Advantage

WebFOCUS offers unique advantages in the areas of data access, application development, and cross-platform deployment, making it the ideal platform for easing the transition from host-based systems and business processes. The original value of these systems is enhanced by its potentially greater impact on many more people over an extended period of time.

David Baum is a freelance writer based in Santa Barbara, CA.

WebFOCUS Renewal – An Open and Shut Case

High ROI and low cost of ownership, especially for FOCUS users on all platforms

Rapid implementation and rich data access features that work with most enterprise data sources and ERP packages

Efficient and powerful FOCUS language preserves existing FOCUS reports while eliminating complex SQL coding and database redesign

Simplified Web deployment through dynamically created HTML interfaces Reduced training requirements for both users and developers

Boosting Productivity, Reducing Costs Through Web Reporting

When existing mainframe, midrange, or UNIX-based applications are integrated with the Web, entire business processes can be recast along Web-based paradigms. Companies can quickly achieve compelling productivity gains and cost savings through:

And because all the technology components come from a single vendor, customers save on:

	Reducing or re-assigning labor
	Enhanced analysis and reporting
	More timely decision-making
	Improved tracking
	Better communications
	Better communications
	Integrated workflows

Counting the Costs

When it's time to integrate legacy reports, applications, and data with the Web, WebFOCUS saves money for users of host-based systems in numerous ways. WebFOCUS saves on implementation costs by reusing important application investments. Leveraging these legacy investments means customers can go live sooner, with less configuring, recoding, and integration than other Web solutions require.

Once WebFOCUS is running, it "earns money" with productive Web applications that can be freely deployed to many users both inside and outside the enterprise, helping to eliminate call centers, paper report distribution, and other operational costs.

WebFOCUS also saves money with its cross-platform portability and scalability. It requires only minor changes to existing FOCUS reports and little or no data reformatting.

And because all the technology components come from a single vendor, customers save on:

	Investments in existing operating platforms, because WebFOCUS runs on all major platforms
	Investments in existing FOCUS reports, including complex EMR and summaries that could be impossible to replicate in SQL
	Programming costs for new HTML applications – WebFOCUS dynamically creates published HTML pages with hyperlinks so users can drill-down to report detail
	Consulting costs for application development and maintenance
	Training costs for both users and developers
	Database design costs, since data accessed by FOCUS can be directly accessed by WebFOCUS – no database reformatting or denormalization is required