Hi All,

Your inputs to this scenario will be highly be appreciated.

Present Situation: we currently have WebFOCUS 7.7.03 & 7.7.06 running on mainframes which executes iBATCH via JCL which consumes data from various sources(DB2, Flat File, VSAM & FOC DB).

Future Situation: In future we are planning on moving to WebFOCUS 8.2.01M which is a Windows version.

So, now the question is what could be the best possible approach to move everything from 7.7.03/.06 to 8.2.01M seamlessly without having to rebuild everything from scratch. Also, is there a solution for handling the iBATCH in WebFOCUS 8.2.1M.

Thanks in Advance.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FP Mod Chuck,

The 8.x version introduced something called a repository. This is an RDBMS based set of tables that contain all your assets with the exception of the Metadata.

When you migrate to Windows what DBMS are you going to be using? Windows can point to DB2, flat files and FOCUS files. If you're still going to need access to VSAM you'll have to point to a server on the Mainframe that can read that data.

I'm not sure how you'll have to deal with iBATCH and JCL since I don't know if they'll still be a part of your data assets once you're on Windows.

You should contact your local IBI sales rep, he/she should find answers to all your questions.

quote:

Originally posted by BabakNYC:
The 8.x version introduced something called a repository. This is an RDBMS based set of tables that contain all your assets with the exception of the Metadata.

Seamlessly, not a chance, are you going to have to rewrite everything? Probably not. Then there is the new security model which will be very specific to your environment.

First, the repository has been around for a while. We have almost nothing in the repository except Report Caster Schedules, Distribution list and User info. 99.9% of our code resides on the Reporting Server, not in the repository.

As for executing WebFOCUS in batch mode, yes you can do it. We are a Linux shop and we do it all the time. I'm sure the process is similar in Windows. In Linux I have a generic script (similar to a Windows .bat file) that I run and all I do is pass it the program name to run.

If you have any permanent FOCUS files, all of them will have to be rebuilt. You can't copy them from one platform to another. Most likely you will have to create a program to extract them into alpha flat files. Copy those flat files to the new server and use MODIFY to load the FOCUS tables. As long as you have the proper DB2 and VSAM adapters, you should be fine. However, don't be surprised if there are new translation features in the 8.2 adapters that are not present in the 7.7 versions. It took us almost 9 months to migrate from 7.6 to 8.08 because we had to test every program. Our database is Oracle and there were a lot of new translation features in the Oracle adapter in 8.08, stuff that did not translate in 7.6 but did in 8.08 and the results were not always what was intended. Maybe coming from 7.7 you won't have those issues but you need to check.

The next thing I would be concerned with is you are moving from EBCDIC to ASCII. This is the other reason that you can copy and permanent FOCUS files from your mainframe to your windows server. Going from EPCDIC to ASCII could change your sort sequences. For example, 0-9 sorts before a-z and A-Z in ASCII where as it sorts after in EBCDIC.

Then there is the chance that you may be a victim of code tightening.

I could be wrong, but I think you are in for a big project.

Thank you BabakNYC, MartinY & jgelona for your valuable inputs. Appreciate!! It.

NewBee

One other consideration is the use of OS commands in your procedures like DYNAM ALLOC etc. These do not translate into Windows OS commands so you will have a lot of remediation to replace those accordingly.