Modernization Mar 8, 2012 · ADP Brokerage

Faced with an old fixed-file database supporting roughly 4 million lines of COBOL, Dennis developed an architectural strategy to divide and conquer key application areas — modernizing to a relational database AND service-oriented web services to bring life back to a 30-year-old back-office system.

The Architecture

Key to the design was an IO abstraction layer: replacing old COBOL IO with a new IO module implementing SQL commands beneath a C isolation service that communicated with the new relational database and returned data sets consumed by the existing business logic. Project requirements: minimal logic changes to 3,000 online, batch, and report programs, with same-or-better IO performance.

Leadership across all phases — development, vendor diagnosis, implementation, system and quality-assurance lifecycle management, and deployment — was critical to the outcome. When the team hit major DB2 performance bottlenecks, Dennis coordinated both IBM and CRI development to detect faulty IBM DB2/400 PL/1 code that required vendor PTFs to resolve project-killing performance problems.

The Outcome

All core files for the brokerage system — Positions, Balances, Transaction History, Name and Address — were successfully implemented into relational tables using SQL technology. Benchmarks showed a 30% increase in overall IO performance against the old file set. More importantly, new SQL-compliant fields and data relationships unlocked modern web technologies, frameworks, and third-party application integrations to power new business functions.

Unprecedented Accomplishments

  • Under 2 years of development
  • 99.8% of the code base unchanged
  • Increased performance and scalability
  • Every compliance date hit — 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 had failed. This one was an outstanding accomplishment.

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