Faced with an old fixed file database below 4 millions of Cobol code, Dennis developed an architectural strategy to divide and conquer key areas of the application to drive modernization to implement both a relational database and service oriented web services to bring life back to a 30 year old back office system.
Key to the design was an implementation of an IO layer that removed old COBOL IO for a new IO module that implemented SQL commands under a C isolation service that communicated with the new relational database and returned data sets that were consumed by the business logic for processing. Project requirements imposed by Mr. Noto, focused on minimal business logic changes to 3,000 online, batch, and report programs as well as same or better IO performance numbers.
Dennis’s leadership through all phases of the project; development, vendor development diagnosis, implementation, system and quality assurance life cycle management, and deployment were critical to the success of the project. Even when Dennis’s development team hit major DB2 performance bottlenecks, he coordinated both IBM and CRI development to detect faulty IBM DB2400 PL1 code that required vendor PTF’s to resolve critical project killing performance problems.
Today, all core files for the brokerage system, Positions, Balances, Transaction History, Name and Address have been successfully implemented into relational tables utilizing SQL technology. Benchmarks have shown that the new database design achieved a 30% increase in overall IO performance against the old file set. More impressive is the new capabilities like SQL compliant field and new data relationships, allowing the development organization to leverage new web technologies/frameworks and third party application integrations for implementing new business functions.
The accomplishments of redesigning the core brokerage data structures into a new relational database are unprecedented and unmatched by any other development organization:
- Under 2 years of development
- 99.8% of the code base unchanged
- Increase in performance and scalability
- Every compliance date obtained. OSI ahead of schedule, first of all brokerage service bureau software providers!
Before Dennis’s tenure, all past database redesign projects in the company’s 30 year history failed while his was an outstanding accomplishment.
