Phase V - Performance Enhancements - .Net Migration Milestones
Dateline: Roseville - June 19, 2008 - Bob Towery
After our news post of June 9, several people asked to see the details of our plan. So this post lays out the milestones involved in our .Net migration path.
Milestone 1 - .Net 2.0:
Summary. Keeping current with the Microsoft .Net development framework is necessary and advantageous. We can take advantages of fixes they provide, as well as new functionality. .Net is also Microsoft's development system, so with each release, .Net gets more stable and gets more integrated with the Windows environment. The development tools our developers utilize continue to improve.
Major changes were made to the .Net framework for version 2.0. Not only improvements in memory management, but lots of structural changes and language changes. The code conversion step is pretty laborious, especially when you consider the size of our system. The 2.0 environment introduces code organization requirements that were not previously in place. There were a lot of changes required or enabled due to security enhancements.
In the 2.x and 3.x environment we no longer will need to replicate attachments and report files to each application server. The various services can now utilize proper security to retrieve these files from a single location.
We feel the Milestone 1 project ismore difficult and time consuming than the Milestone 2 project. Our software comprises over 7,000 source code files, every one has to be converted.
1.a. Infrastructure
- Convert/rewrite infrastructure - 65 services. Done
- Develop support for MMC (Microsoft Mgt Console). Done
1.b. Convert Client:
- state loader: Done
- bootstrap: Done
- ETUI: Done
- Shell: Done
1.c Convert Escape Types
- 100 System ET's: Done
- 210 Finance ET's: Done
- 165 HR/Pay (Not Done)
1.d. Business Logic Services
- Be able to login: Done
- Convert one service to 2.0 - vendor reqs - Done / working through issues as of today June 19
- Provide this as a "test system" to ECC (goal - get idea of memory mgt/performance gains)
- Determine "unlikely to be changed services" and convert them, probably about 150 services.
1.e Cleanup
- Finish re-write of software update
- Merge in Jan-Apr UI changes
Milestone 2 - .Net 3.5:
Summary. There are not nearly as many structural changes in the 3.x versions as compared to the 2.x version. This version really integrates the development framework with Vista and Server 2008 (although these are not required). An entirely new presentation (e.g. UI) library is available to us. With better integration with Windows, we presume there will be improvements in memory management, speed and stability.
2.a
- Compile infrastructure / Server ET's.
- Compile client.
- Convert the vendor req service, that was converted in 1.d above.
- Provide this to ECC as a "test system." (goal, get idea of memory mgt/performance gains)
2.b
- Convert the 2.0 BL services converted in 1.c above.
- Provide this to ECC as a test system. Potential release for Ventura/Placer to test.
2.c
- Now convert those services that are changing frequently, to 2.0, then 3.5 From now until 3.5 goes live, we have to make changes in both the 1.1 and the 3.5 code.
- Release to test. Resolve problems.
2.d
- Release to customers.
Note - 3.5 Customer Implementation considerations:
- SQL 2005 (required)
- MMC (configuration needed)
- Distributed Services (setup)
- .Net install (part of install)
- New Crystal Install (part of install)
Milestone 3 - (also .Net 3.5):
Rework client UI to utilize .Net's new UI toolkit.
Determine if reporting will be changed. Going to a push model for example, bypassing Crystal on the server.
Other capabilities that are now possible such as Active Directory integration.
Comments? Send us an email and let us know what you think.
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