EDGE User Group

Where should the next EMEA event be held?

EDGE is looking at potential venues for the next EMEA event. Please let us know where you would like the event to be held!

Two New White Papers to Download!

You can find these files in the White Papers section of the site.

Name: Butler Group - The Benefits of Model Driven Development
Description:
Model Driven Development (MDD) is the next step of abstraction in writing software applications.

CA Gen is the MDD tool from CA that has a long history of successfully delivering applications: many of the early mainframe applications written in CA Gen are now benefiting from this choice of tool as models can remain unchanged and the code re-generated for newer, distributed computing platforms.

Name: The ROI of Developing Applications With CA Gen

Description:
IT organizations are under constant pressure to do more with less, prove their return on investment (ROI) and link IT investments to business strategies.

CA Gen empowers IT organizations to deliver the right mission critical applications faster, with better quality and continues to deliver significant measurable financial returns to customers around the world.

CA AllFusion® Gen: Fast Track - Training brought to you by Kale Consultants

The AllFusion Gen product suite provides a model-based environment proven development environment for designing, deploying, and maintaining high-performance, scalable business applications by allowing IT developers to build reusable components, web-enabled applications as well as integrating legacy software with new systems. Training is done without the need to learn the many development tools and languages normally associated with distributed application development and yet allows trainees the ability to deliver complex applications that meet rapidly changing requirements.

Instructor expertise brought to you by Kale Consultants, a leading CA Smart Partner

Kale Consultants has built up substantial expertise in AllFusion® Gen environment and is a Global Development Partner of CA. The team has worked across three generations of the AllFusion Gen tool and is amongst the first to migrate to the latest version of AllFusion Gen; backed by several hundred man-years undertaking development, enhancement and maintenance & support for large and mission critical and enterprise wide applications.

EMEA & EDGEucate Presentations Available

The presentations from the EMEA 2007 & EDGEucate 2007 events are now available for conference attendees to download. Attendees at either event may download all the presentation documents.

When you click on one of the downloadable files a pop-up will be displayed by the web browser requesting a userid/password. Use the userid/password provided at the conference. Note the the userid/password are case sensitive.

If you have lost the userid/password just email info@edgeusergroup.org and request it.

Jumar extends CA Gen training courses

Jumar Solutions Europe, has extended its range of specialist training courses for CA Gen users. Two new modules – Web Generation and Proxies and Encyclopedia Administration – have been added to the existing modules, providing a complete, up to date, suite of Gen training material.

The training modules were developed by Active Development Group (ADG), a US services and education company, well known for its Gen expertise since its formation in 1998. Jumar has worked closely with ADG for the last six years and has now acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to all the ADG training material encompassing the new and existing modules.

Wendy Merricks, Managing Director, Jumar says ‘ Adding these latest modules to our portfolio will mean we can cover the complete range of Gen training requirements and we are delighted to be able to offer this service worldwide’

‘After working with Jumar for many years, we know this agreement will allow Gen users to continue to benefit from having courses delivered by a Gen expert’ commented Susan Pierce President, ADG

The new training courses are available immediately and can be delivered on site, at a time convenient to the client.

Upgrading CA Gen: Where Do I Start?

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 – 11:00 EST

Learn helpful hints and techniques for upgrading your CA Gen environment to the latest r7.6 release. This web seminar provides an upgrade framework, general guidelines and best practices based upon real world experiences. Learn how to plan a successful CA Gen upgrade that will minimize the impact to your existing production applications.

Sign up at http://ca.com/us/events/item.aspx?e=138680&eis=1

Where did the Plex/2E content go?

The CA Plex and CA 2E product forums have moved to a new location within the CA Product Line Community site. To access the new forum, go to http://caforums.ca.com and follow the instructions to register and begin posting. For questions, please send an e-mail to Plex2E@ca.com.

EDGENews- Spring 2007 Edition

The Board of Directors is working very hard to renew and improve the value that EDGE brings to the CA Gen community. We have completed our work on refocusing EDGE solely on the CA Gen Model Driven Development environment. Also, we have taken on a leadership role within CAs Product Line Community for CA Gen. Finally, we have established our budget and initiatives for 2007. We are ready to Rock and Roll!

One of our 2007 initiatives is to produce a quarterly newsletter focused on the EDGE community. In this first newsletter of 2007, you will learn about:

The proposed Component Based Development Special Interest Group at the EMEA conference this fall (CBD SIG)
The start of the EDGE CIO Forum Initiative
EDGE participation at CA World
EDGEucate 2007 the new and improved US EDGE Educational Days
EMEA 2007
The Advocacy Program
The rollout of the new EDGE Web site focused entirely on CA Gen

As always we welcome your input, guidance and volunteerism. If you would like to get involved in any of the activities you read about in this newsletter, please call our U.S. EDGE office at 1.312.245.1589 and speak to one of our staff members. Or, if you wish, send an e-mail to judi.michaels@eds.com or sandra.barr@eds.com or info@edgeusergroup.org and your request will be directed to the appropriate area.

Thanks in advance for your active participation. As Chairman, I look forward to a great 2007, working with a great Board, focused on a great development environment, energized by a great community!

Thank you again for your support of the EDGE user group.

Larry Schmidt

Chairman, EDGE

larry.schmidt@eds.com

www.edgeusergroup.org

CA Announces Statement of Direction for Gen 7.6

Statement of Direction AllFusion Gen r7.6
z/OS Dynamic Program Call - Migration Support Revised – 29Aug06

Abstract

Some complex customer z/OS application environments consist of AllFusion Gen and non-AllFusion Gen components which must interact with each other. Beginning with AllFusion Gen r7, z/OS runtimes were delivered as DLLs. This meant that AllFusion Gen applications, screens, procedure steps and action blocks had to be linked as DLLs. Because of COBOL’s linking conventions, DLL modules cannot call non-DLL load modules and non-DLL COBOL applications cannot call DLLs.

Since many customers cannot convert their non-Gen applications to call DLL modules, the Gen r7.6 release will include a Compatibility feature which will allow generated applications to call existing non-DLL style modules. A priority enhancement (delivered as a service pack or PTFs to AllFusion Gen r7.6) will follow the AllFusion Gen r7.6 release and will allow the modification, generation and building of these non-DLL modules using AllFusion Gen r7.6 tools.

The AllFusion Gen r7.5 - benefits of the new z/OS runtimes paper on SupportConnect lists the benefits associated with moving to a full LE environment. For a more detailed technical overview of the evolution of the z/OS runtimes, see the paper Evolution of AllFusion Gen z/OS Runtimes also on SupportConnect.

The following paper discusses both additions of AllFusion Gen capabilities; their proposed implementation, use and considerations in relation to future migrations.

QWIK.xml Exchange

This paper outlines a recent integration success where two businesses required their respective heterogeneous applications to communicate in a transactional manner. This integration project was recently implemented to provide business to business XML integration between a large business application and a vendor.