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Four Approaches (Part 1)
For those of you considering moves from FOCUS to WebFOCUS, there are four possible approaches to consider. Whether the application in question supports ad hoc reporting on inventory or accounting files or if you rely on nightly batch runs or monthly report cycles to produce critical information for running your business, Information Builders is ready to support the approach you choose.
One possibility is Maintenance, remaining where you are right now, in FOCUS on the mainframe. A second approach involves continual enhancement of your mainframe FOCUS systems, adding new functionality delivered in each FOCUS release – the Development approach. A third option, often employed by organizations that have both WebFOCUS and FOCUS, is solving new problems with WebFOCUS and tying FOCUS and WebFOCUS together wherever possible – the Integration approach. Finally, some sites simply Migrate (existing) applications into WebFOCUS. Whatever direction you take, rest assured that your investments in FOCUS and WebFOCUS will be well cared for with enhancements in both functionality and performance.
Maintenance
For those who take the Maintenance approach, keeping your FOCUS applications running is our paramount goal. We are currently supporting FOCUS versions 7.0.8R, 7.0.9, 7.1.1, 7.2.x, and 7.3.x. FOCUS 7.2.x and 7.3.x are both service pack releases, meaning that we provide maintenance in the form of a regularly scheduled service pack. Older releases are still supported with PTFs.
A critical aspect of our support for these applications is certification of those releases on the newer IBM operating systems. While your FOCUS application may not be changing, the underlying operating systems are subject to continual change. To date, all supported FOCUS releases are certified up to and including the latest IBM z/OS V1R7 release. Certification for the z/OS V1R8 release will begin early this summer. You can always check release/operating system certification by visiting the Information Builders Web site here.
For those following the Maintenance path, it is important to understand that as FOCUS and WebFOCUS have developed, great care has been taken to ensure the viability of applications written in the FOCUS language 10, 15, or even 20 years ago. This ensures your ability to leverage application development investments into the future and allows applications to grow with you, even undertaking major transformations, such as moving them into the Web world, with minimal resistance. Take a look too at the Integration or the Migration paths, which could offer important steps going forward.
Development
Many of our users actively develop and enhance FOCUS applications, taking advantage of new functionality delivered with each new major release. Since FOCUS 7.2 and the beginning of the unification of FOCUS source code and WebFOCUS Report Server, much new functionality has been added to meet the needs of two distinct areas – FOCUS and WebFOCUS.
From WebFOCUS, we see enhancements in the STYLESHEET syntax that are also available to FOCUS users in the latest release, with full support for features such as:
Given the importance of EXL2K and PDF output in Web environment, adding this ability to existing FOCUS reports can greatly facilitate presentation of that important information to users who need it. And, moving forward, you can migrate those reports to WebFOCUS more easily. Check out the documentation in the FOCUS 7.3 Manual on StyleSheets (Chapters 10 and 11 in Creating Reports) if you are unfamiliar with these features, available here.
Over time, the FOR syntax in FOCUS has had many names – SML (Small Modeling Language), FRL (Financial Reporting Language), EMR (Extended Matrix Reporting), and most recently FML (Financial Modeling Language). Recently WebFOCUS introduced major enhancements to the FOR syntax that are now also available to FOCUS developers.
Prior to these enhancements, FML required explicit statements of what was supposed to go into every line of the report using the FOR syntax. New syntax added to the Master File Description supports such new functionality as BY HIERARCHY, coming in FOCUS 7.6. Field declarations can now include PROPERTY and REFERENCE attributes which, among other things, allow you to define parent-child hierarchies that can be exploited with the new FOR syntax option – WITH CHILDREN. This syntax drills down into the parent-child hierarchy generating whatever code is necessary for hierarchies up to 99 levels deep. BY HIERARCHY syntax in FOCUS 7.6 will add even more flexibility when working with hierarchies contained within the data itself, such as GL accounts, part numbers, or even time. With this new functionality, when you add or delete a department or account, you no longer need to worry about changing your FML report to accommodate it, as your FOCUS or WebFOCUS report already takes care of it.
New features are also coming from the FOCUS side as well. With FOCUS 7.3, the FOCUS database acquired the larger partitions many of you sought. The FOCUS file is built with 4K pages. It allows you have 512K pages for a maximum size of 2GB, which is the largest FOCUS file that you can use with MODIFY. For users who hit that limit, Information Builders introduced the XFOCUS file in FOCUS 7.3. The XFOCUS file is built with 16K pages and can support up to 1024K pages in a single partition, resulting in a maximum 16GB partition.
The XFOCUS files are supported with all the FOCUS syntax, including the Sink Machine. Additionally, FOCUS and XFOCUS files can be mixed in COMBINEs and in JOINs. In developing the XFOCUS structure, the FOCUS I/O mechanism has been enhanced to handle both FOCUS and XFOCUS files. In working with them, you engage the new I/O mechanism with SET XFC=ON. With this in place, SUFFIX=XFOC in the Master File is respected and produces the XFOCUS file through CREATE FILE or MODIFY FILE. You can also generate temporary XFOCUS files with HOLD FORMAT XFOCUS. FOCUS files use the BINS setting to control memory usage; XFOCUS files use XFOCUSBINS to do the same thing. Currently these are 4K pages and the default is set to 16. You can adjust this up to a maximum of 1024.
The XFOCUS database allows you to create a data warehouse of 4 terabytes – 250 partitions tied together in an ACCESS file. With so much data, retrieval performance becomes an important consideration. To reduce I/O for large files, FOCUS 7.6 includes the Multidimensional Index (MDI) for FOCUS and XFOCUS files. This is an external index that can include multiple fields from any segment of a reporting structure – a multi-segment XFOCUS/FOCUS file, or a number of XFOCUS/FOCUS files JOINed together. There is no limit to the number of MDIs that can be built for a file. The ACCESS file for the Master includes syntax to specify the MDI attributes including the MDI name, location, and participating fields or dimensions.
The MDI is built using REBUILD, and engaged with SET AUTOINDEX=ON. AUTOINDEX includes full optimization that selects the most efficient retrieval strategy when given a mixture of FOCUS/XFOCUS Indices, External Indices, and/or MDIs that can be used. A particularly effective strategy for using MDIs is to use them to create indices for specific I/O intensive reports that involve three or more different selection criteria (WHERE or IF tests).
There is detailed information on the XFOCUS files and the MDI in Chapter 6 of the FOCUS 7.3 Describing Data Manual, which you can access here.
In the next issue of TABLE FILE CAR, we will examine the other two approaches you can take on the path from FOCUS to WebFOCUS – integration and migration.
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