Isn’t it time to give Ada a break?

 

The coding language’s namesake, Ada Lovelace, had a rough life. She began life as a pawn in an infamous aristocratic marital deathmatch. Her father, the famous poet Lord Byron, despised her, calling her an “instrument of torture.” Her mother deeply resented her, and pushed her into mathematics to spite her literary rockstar father. 

But Ada thrived in the world of numbers. Working with Charles Babbage, generally considered the father of the computer, Ada first conceptualized the idea of a computer language, prophetically referring to Babbage’s difference engine as a “thinking machine.” She devised the first program to calculate Bernoulli numbers within the earliest mechanical computing devices.

 

“A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis”
—Ada Lovelace

 

Just look at the difference engine and you can see that Ms. Lovelace worked at the intersection of computing software and hardware machinery. So it made sense that the US Department of Defense named its largest embedded coding project ever after her. The Ada language was released in 1977 as a high-level object-oriented language for use in real-time and embedded systems.

 

“If Ada fails, people die.”

 

Those real-time constraints have meant that Ada has to perform without error. It’s used in safety critical embedded systems for air traffic control, avionics, weapons control, global positioning navigation, and medical equipment. If Ada fails, people die.

 

Why break up with Ada?

 

Ada has served remarkably well over the years and still does. But as the nature scale of computing changes beyond even Ada Lovelace’s wildest imaginings, her namesake needs updating to the cloud age. The disadvantages are starting to tell:

 

Ada coders are rare—and expensive
Ada is less common than Java, and the ratio of Java programmers to Ada programmers is now about 20:1. That relative scarcity has also driven up the cost of hiring Ada coders.

 

Ada is less integration-friendly
Most Java and C# installations are not easy to integrate with Ada applications, taking more of those expensive Ada coder hours to implement and maintain.

 

Ada compilers are getting harder to find
With the decline in use comes a decline in vendors. The increasing scarcity of compilers will drive up costs while reducing sources of innovation.

 

Ada’s licensing future is uncertain
As more and more systems modernize, Ada licensing will change. And there’s no indication that it will get easier or less expensive. As Ada becomes more and more a “collector’s item,” its price will probably rise.

 

The libraries are old and aging
Sure, once an Ada library is running it requires less maintenance, but its libraries tend to be old and, as a result of that lack of required maintenance, not updated. (i.e., “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”) This presents a risk.

 

Eventually, Ada will be so far behind that the costs of running it will outweigh the benefits of keeping it performing as flawlessly as necessary. But often it’s hard to see the additional cost of Ada coders, missed innovation opportunities, creeping licensing costs, and higher risk until something becomes urgent. The best approach is to take care of it sooner rather than waiting for a crisis.

 

Giving Ada a second—and better—life

 

So how do you continue—and improve on—Ada’s outstanding track record, while clearing the way for the fast-evolving needs and future of modern computing? And how do you do it all without disrupting critical the safety of air traffic, the protection of warfighters, or the pinpointing of GPS satellites? Well, if you’ve flown to Europe in the last 10 years, you’ve already experienced TSRI’s solution in action.

Over decades and through hundreds of modernization projects, TSRI has perfected an automated methodology that delivers full assurance, and greater speed at a fraction of the cost of manual modernization efforts.

Using AI and machine learning, TSRI’s proprietary JANUS Studio^® automates 99.9X% of the modernization process, while maintaining (and improving) the exacting levels of performance Ada embedded systems demand. Code modernization projects that would have taken years now take months—or weeks—and can save over 90% on post-modernization code maintenance.
 

 

Speaking of thinking machines, JANUS Studio^® learns and evolves with every line of code it sees and transforms. For each modernization, its unique modeling format takes advantage of the over 200 million lines of code it has transformed for higher and higher speed and accuracy. That means faster, continually more assured, and less costly modernization for your Ada code.

TSRI’s near 100%-automated transformation technology accurately, quickly, and cost-effectively transforms legacy code, underlying databases, and user interfaces into multi-tiered modern environments. Then, to achieve unrivaled accuracy, it documents and re-factors the modernized application using the same fully automated technology and model-driven iterative approach.

 

If you think this is something for future consideration, it’s not. Action is going to be needed—and soon. In the coming months, government agencies and other organizations will need to respond to the newly-introduced Legacy IT Reduction Bill introduced recently by John Cornyn, (R-TX) and Maggie Hansen (D-NH). It mandates modernization and calls for specific steps to be taken right away on passage to show progress. So, even it feels like Ada is still doing its job, it’s time to start thinking about showing her the door.

 

Take a look at some of the major clients whose Ada code has gotten a second, modernized life through TSRI:

Eurocat Air Traffic Management System (TopSky) tracks commercial aircraft over 19 European countries and Australia. Transformation of Ada to both Java and C++ with improved performance and maintainability.

The Canadian Armed Forces Crypto Material Management System (CMMS) handles the reception, distribution and control of NATO cryptographic material. Conversion of Ada to C# at 100% automation.

GEMS (Geospatial Embedded Mapping Software) provides real-time ground proximity information for the B52, F15 and other aircraft. 100% successful conversion with unit testing that met and exceeded military avionics standards.

The Navy’s P-3C Orion aircraft acoustic signal processor, which receives and analyzes sonobuoy data for maritime patrol and reconnaissance. Modernized Ada code for 100% compatibility with and provided error-free linkages to the targeted platform in C++.

 

 

Get ahead of mandated modernization, contact TSRI now.

 

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TSRI is Here for You 
TSRI brings software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years. As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments.

 

See Case Studies 
Learn About Our Technology 
Get Started on Your Modernization Journey Today! 

Downtime, lack of agility, and vendor lock may keep organizations from modernizing their aging legacy applications, but plenty of other roadblocks, whether technical or psychological, can also stand in the way from an organization from undertaking a high-stakes modernization effort. For example:

• One TSRI defense client had been using the same COBOL mainframe applications for nearly 50 years. The agency expected that migrating away from this mission-critical system would require downtime that could have led to data loss, mission interruptions, and catastrophic security failures.
   
• Another client, a large European bank, used mainframe applications that could have served them well for another decade or longer. However, upstart digital competitors were running circles around this financial powerhouse. They needed more agility.
   
• Another defense client wanted to migrate its applications to Amazon Web Services but worried about limited options. Their mainframe used a proprietary architecture and applications, and the agency was locked into long-term contracts that would have prevented them from undergoing a transformation. This agency needed assurances a transformation could be done—and done properly.

 

 

Understanding and Overcoming the Misconceptions and Fears

If you’re a change maker in your organization — whether on the business or IT side — you probably see the need to modernize your applications. Throughout our 26 years of modernizing critical applications, we have found that many perceived obstacles are actually misconceptions, fears, uncertainties, or doubts that arise due to a lack of information.

Here are the most common misconceptions and obstacles, and how we help our clients get around them:

 

Obstacle 1: “It Will Cost Too Much!”
Cost almost always rises to the top of the list. From an OpEx perspective, once a modernized system goes into production, your organization can achieve savings quickly and dramatically. One client reduced its IT operations costs from over $1 million to tens of thousands of dollars—per month. While not every transformation will yield remarkable savings like that, your organization will recoup its modernization costs quickly.

In addition, because an automated transformation is much less likely to produce the inevitable errors produced by humans—we are, after all, only human—that means far lower instances of cost overruns.

 

Obstacle 2: System Downtime
Many organizations see time to market and system downtime as major concerns. Undertaking an automated modernization will be the fastest, most reliable alternative nearly all the time. As opposed to rewriting all or most of the code in the target language by hand, a fully automated transformation can take months—if not years—off the timeframe to bring the modernized application into production. Such automated modernizations also can give you the option to run your applications in the legacy and modernized environments side by side for testing, and then flip the switch to put the new environment into production with very little, if any, downtime—which means no disruption to the business.

 

Obstacle 3: “If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix it!”
Organizations may also face the dilemma of making change if there isn’t a need to change. Such attitudes can be embedded into an organization’s culture, and convincing top management to commit to large expenditures where much of the beauty lies under the hood can be a heavy lift. However, external issues may force a modernization—oftentimes when it’s too late.

Most enterprise companies and government agencies running mainframes historically had armies of programmers that maintained their systems. As the decades rolled by, however, most of those programmers retired from the workforce while computer science programs shifted to educating on modern, object-oriented languages like C# or Java. As one client discovered for PL/1, a much more obscure mainframe language, the agency that ran the application found only a single person in the entire country capable of supporting the application. That was clearly not a sustainable solution.

Even more challenging, the language or platform itself may have survived past its reasonable lifespan. TSRI has modernized applications originally housed on mainframes built by Wang. The company ceased to exist in the 1990s and its subsequent iterations no longer supported a version of COBOL proprietary to its systems. At that point, modernization wasn’t a luxury—it was a necessity.

 

Obstacle 4: The Knowledge Gap
Finally, when a legacy system has been in service for 40, 50, or even 60 years, the original developers will doubtfully still be a part of the organization. Institutional knowledge can be passed down, but most IT leaders won’t have a clear view of what their systems can do. The transformation engine that takes on an automated modernization can also generate documentation that provides a detailed blueprint of an application today and how it will function in the modern target language. Those insights will help the engineers who maintain the application understand how a modernization can achieve their business goals.

 

Face the Fear and Reap Big Rewards!

Undertaking a drastic change like modernizing an application comes with risks and likely some trepidation, but it also creates opportunities that might never have been possible by continuing to maintain a legacy system. Completion of a successful transformation will not only save your organization money and give you better access to development resources, it will make your organization more agile and provide you with modern tools to better serve your end users.

 

TSRI is Here for You

As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years.

See Case Studies

Learn About Our Technology

Get Started on your Modernization Journey Today!

How much automation actually makes a difference?
10% of 10 million lines of code is still 1 million lines.

A major modernization project involving millions or tens of millions of lines of code can take years and cost millions of dollars. Using artificial intelligence and modern computing method and automation, much of that time and expense can be eliminated. The question is, by how much? If your project starts out at 10 million lines of code and your automation technique cuts that down by 90%, you’re still left with a 1-million-line project that can take months to manually assess, document, transform, and refactor.

To appreciably accelerate large modernization projects, automation must eliminate as near as possible to 100% of the effort. That means in the range of 99.9X%. Without that, your organization can be left with significant and costly manual loads that can take years, strain budgets, result in unacceptable error rates, and still produce poorly written modern code. Even advanced automation cannot take code straight from any source language to a modern cloud-ready language. First, the code must be translated through a universally accepted language modeling system and standard to maximize the extensibility and efficiency of application analysis, transformation, and refactoring—an Intermediate Object Model (IOM). This is one of the keys to accelerating modernization that The Software Revolution Inc. (TSRI) has implemented for their clients.

The languages used for specifying grammars and transformations must fit the specific problems at hand and be as expressive and efficient as possible. TSRI has developed and defined three domain-specific high-level specification languages JPGEN™, JTGEN™ and JRGEN™:

• JPGEN™ defines grammar system and language models

• JTGEN™ delineates transformations between these models

• JRGEN™, a 5th generation artificial intelligence language supports first order logic and predicate calculus as well as 3GL and 4GL language constructs

Together, these three proprietary tools comprise TSRI’s JANUS Studio^®.

IOM: A Literally Exponential Improvement in Transformation
The three components of JANUS Studio^® transform and compile software code originally developed in language such as Ada, Visual Basic, Vax Basic, C, C++, COBOL, C#, Java, Jovial, FORTRAN, and more than 30 other languages into efficient, platform-neutral C++.  The core function of the IOM creates a language-neutral model into which all legacy source languages are transformed, and from which all modernized target languages can be generated. The IOM is effectively a universal translator. It simplifies the “O(n-squared)” language transformation problem to a much simpler “O(n+1)” language transformation problem. The IOM provides a set of generic language constructs that serve as a reusable language-neutral formalism for assessment, documentation, transformation, refactoring, and web-enablement.

This solution allows simple 64-bit multi-processor LINUX platforms to analyze massive software models using parallel processing.

Using IOM, and the expertise of TSRI’s exceptionally skilled developers, JANUS Studio^® is simply the most powerful, least expensive, and lowest risk technology available to automatically modernize (assess, document, transform, refactor, and web-enable) legacy systems. Using the AI-enhanced capabilities of JANUS Studio^®, 99.9X% of software transformation can be automated, cutting transformation project times from years to months—or weeks.
 

"Simply the most powerful, least expensive and lowest risk technology available to automatically assess, document, transform, refactor, and web-enable legacy systems.”

A Model for Automated Modernization

As Scale Increases, So Does Efficiency
JANUS Studio^®  allows TSRI developers to cut modernization projects so drastically using Artificial Intelligence-based modeling that drives that 99.9X% automation rate. Not only that, but because every application and every language is modernized and transformed at the meta-model stage, every prior project (regardless of the language or industry) further develops the toolset and TSRI libraries, resulting in greater value for each future project. The more scale, the more uses, the more efficient the process.
 

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It’s no surprise that TSRI adheres to the Object Management Group (OMG) principles of model-based and architecture-driven software modernization. We’re not just a member, TSRI is the principal author of the Abstract Syntax Tree Meta-Modelling Standard used by the OMG. We’re deeply involved in the innovations and future of OMG and look forward to the next Member Meeting March 21-25 in Reston, Virginia. If you plan to be there, we’d love to talk about how to significantly accelerate your modernization projects, while lowering cost and error rates.
 

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TSRI is Here for You 
As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years. 

See Case Studies 
Learn About Our Technology 
Get Started on Your Modernization Journey Today! 

 

Highlights on “Setting Project Scope” and “Setting Up Development Sandboxes”

TSRI is thrilled to present highlights from Modernizing for the Future, our cloud webinar featuring Scott Pickett, our Vice President of Product Development and Service Delivery. In these first two segments, Scott helps your organization get the mainframe modernization process started.

The first segment, “Setting Project Scope,” helps your organization understand their existing baselines, setting realistic expectations and accomplishments for your migration, and planning your target environment.

In this second segment, “Setting Up Development Sandboxes,” Scott discusses your organization’s development sandbox and why setting up an experimental environment will be critical to the success of your automated modernization. Your sandbox will help validate your target environment as well as understand any complexities in languages, architectures, or databases.

 

Be sure to check out the remaining videos in this series as well:

Part 3: Selecting Cloud Vendors and Your Target Language

Part 4: Using Automation to Quickly and Accurately Move to a Multi-Tier Environment

Part 5: Modernizing Using Layered Architectures

Part 6: Effective Testing During Modernizations

 

As always, TSRI can help answer any questions you may have about automated modernization, and making sure your systems are ready to deploy in modern computing environments.

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TSRI is Here for You

As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years.

Get started on your modernization journey today!