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Reduce the Risk of Application Modernization by Retaining Business Logic

While legacy database applications power the business operations of many organizations, they can prevent them from realizing the benefits of digital transformation. Yet organizations settle for the status quo because application modernization can be a long, expensive, and risky journey that can involve replacing thousands of lines of custom-developed business logic. OpenROAD, Actian’s solution for rapid database application development, makes it easy to modernize applications with low risk by retaining your investment in existing business logic. This blog will cover all the details of how this is possible.

What is application business logic?

Before delving into OpenROAD, let’s start with a brief overview of what application business logic is. Application business logic includes the set of rules, processes, and workflows that define how an application operates and how it handles data and user interactions to deliver specific business functionality. It governs how an application processes and validates data, performs calculations, manages workflows, enforces business rules, handles errors and exceptions, and generates outputs. The application business logic also defines how the application is integrated with external systems and security controls to protect data, maintain data integrity, and prevent unauthorized access.

OpenROAD and preservation of business logic

When creating OpenROAD, Actian realized that applications require continuous adaptation and improvement as technology evolves, business requirements change, and new opportunities emerge over time. This is why OpenROAD’s key features and design principles focus so heavily on preserving business logic for application modernization projects as discussed below:

Model-Driven Development

OpenROAD makes it possible for developers to follow a model-driven development approach, allowing them to define the business logic of their applications using high-level models rather than low-level code. This helps to abstract away technical complexities and focus on capturing the essential business rules and processes.

Data Independence

OpenROAD provides a data abstraction layer that decouples the application’s business logic from the underlying database schema. This allows developers to define business rules and logic independently of the database structure, facilitating easier maintenance and future changes to the application.

Component-Based Architecture

OpenROAD applications are built using a component-based architecture that promotes code reuse, simplifies maintenance, and ensures consistency across the application.

Business Logic Encapsulation

Encapsulation separates the implementation details of the business logic from other parts of the application, promoting modularity, maintainability, and reusability. OpenROAD Server is a critical component of the OpenROAD platform, providing the runtime environment and infrastructure needed to deploy and execute OpenROAD applications effectively and allowing developers to encapsulate reusable business logic into modular components.

Integration Capabilities

OpenROAD provides integration capabilities that allow developers to incorporate existing business logic and functionality from other systems or applications. This enables organizations to leverage their existing investments in business logic while modernizing their applications with OpenROAD.

Version Control and Change Management

OpenROAD includes features for version control and change management, allowing developers to track and manage changes to the application’s business logic over time. This helps to preserve the integrity of the business rules and ensure that modifications are properly documented and auditable.

Modernize your OpenROAD applications

Your legacy database applications may be stable, but most may not meet the needs of digital business today. You don’t have to settle for the status quo. OpenROAD preserves business logic to reduce application modernization work. OpenROAD provides a flexible and scalable development platform that supports a model-driven development approach, data independence, a component-based architecture, encapsulation, integration capabilities, and version control. These features help organizations maintain and evolve their business logic effectively while developing and modernizing their applications.

The post Reduce the Risk of Application Modernization by Retaining Business Logic appeared first on Actian.


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Author: Teresa Wingfield

Legacy Transactional Databases: Oh, What a Tangled Web

Database modernization is increasingly needed for digital transformation, but it’s hard work. There are many reasons why; this blog will drill down on one of the main ones: legacy entanglements. Often, organizations have integrated legacy databases with business processes, the applications they run (and their dependencies), and systems such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, supply chain management, human resource management, point-of-sales systems, and e-commerce. Plus, there’s middleware and integration, identify and access management, backup and recovery, replication, and other technology integrations to consider.

Your Five-Step Plan for Untangling Legacy Dependencies

So, how do you safely untangle legacy databases for database modernization in the cloud? Here’s a list of steps that you can take for greater success and a less disruptive transition.

1. Understand and Document Dependencies and Underlying Technologies

There are many activities involved in identifying legacy dependencies. A good start is to review any available database documentation for integrations, including mentions of third-party libraries, frameworks, and services that the database relies on. Code review, with the help of dependency management tools, can identify dependencies within the legacy codebase. Developers, architects, database administrators, and other team members may be able to provide additional insights into legacy dependencies.

2. Prioritize Dependencies

Prioritization is important since you can’t do everything at once. Prioritizing legacy dependencies involves assessing the importance, impact, and risk associated with each dependency in the context of a migration or modernization effort. Higher-priority dependencies should incorporate those that are critical for the database to function and that have the highest business value. When assessing business impact, include how dependencies affect revenue generation and critical business operations.

Also, consider risks, interdependencies, and migration complexity when prioritizing dependencies. For example, outdated technologies can threaten database security and stability. Database dependencies can have significant ripple effects throughout an organization’s systems and processes that require careful consideration. For example, altering a database schema during a migration can lead to application errors, malfunctions, or performance issues. Finally, some dependencies are easier to migrate or replace than others and this might impact its importance or urgency during migration.

3. Take a Phased Approach

A phased migration approach to database modernization that includes preparation, planning, execution, operation, and optimization helps organizations manage complexity, minimize risks, and ensure continuity of operations throughout the migration process. Upfront preparation and planning are necessary to ensure success. It may be beneficial to start small with low-risk or non-critical components to validate procedures and identify issues. The operating phase involves managing workloads, including performance monitoring, resource management, security, and compliance. It’s critical to optimize activities and address concerns in these areas.

4. Reduce Risks

To reduce the risks associated with dependencies, consider approaches that run legacy and modern systems in parallel and use staging environments for testing. Replication offers redundancy that can help ensure business continuity. In case unexpected issues arise, always have a rollback plan to minimize disruption.

5. Breakdown Monolithic Dependencies

Lastly, don’t recreate the same monolithic dependencies found in your legacy database so that you can get the full benefits of digital transformation. A microservices architecture can break down the legacy database into smaller, independent components that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. This means that changes to one part of the database don’t affect other parts, reducing the risk of system-wide failures and making the database much easier to maintain and enhance.

How Actian Can Help with Database Modernization

The Ingres NeXt Readiness Assessment offers a pre-defined set of professional services tailored to your requirements. The service is designed to assist you with understanding the requirements to modernize Ingres and Application By Forms (ABF) or OpenROAD applications and to impart recommendations important to your modernization strategy formulation, planning, and implementation.

Based on the knowledge gleaned from the Ingres NeXt Readiness Assessment, Actian can assist you with your pilot and production deployment. Actian can also facilitate a training workshop should you require preliminary training.

For more information, please contact services@actian.com.

The post Legacy Transactional Databases: Oh, What a Tangled Web appeared first on Actian.


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Author: Teresa Wingfield