New Faces at Treehouse Software

by Joseph Brady, Director of Business Development and Cloud Alliance Leader at Treehouse Software, Inc.

Treehouse Software is growing and on the move! We are proud to have many staff members who have been here for 20+ years, and we have recently brought on several experienced business, mainframe, and Cloud experts. Meet our newest team members:

John Szakach, Chief Operating Officer

John joined Treehouse as a Business Strategy Consultant and in 2021 was promoted to Chief Operating Officer. While new to Treehouse, John brings over 40 years of relevant work experience to the organization and is an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner as well as a Certified Project Management Professional. John has held a variety of management roles in different industries including VP of Organizational Effectiveness, VP of Quality Assurance, and VP of New Product Development. He has also held positions as Director of Flight Standards and Quality Control, and Director of Operations. In addition to over 51 years of total flight experience, including 20 years as a pilot for United Airlines, he has received numerous awards including the United Airlines Captain of the Year and the FAA Master Pilot Award, the FAA’s highest award for safety and compliance. John has a Bachelor’s Degree in aviation management.

Dan Miley, Product Support

Dan is a software engineer with deep experience and understanding of IBM Assembler, COBOL, JCL, IDMS, SAP ECC. He has worked with some of the world’s largest organizations, including president/consultant of his own company for over 10 years. Dan has already been instrumental in landing some major mainframe-to-Cloud data modernization customers for Treehouse Software.

Sasha Efron, Senior Technical Representative

Sasha is a mainframe technical specialist and DBA with over 25 years experience in in systems analysis, design, development, enhancement, testing, implementation and maintenance in insurance and banking systems with specialization in Software AG and IBM Mainframe technologies. He also has been involved in legacy modernization projects for several worldwide companies.

Joseph Rogan, Senior Technical Representative

Joseph is a Senior Technology Leader with 30+ years experience working in multiple industries, including transportation (specifically rail), logistics, education, financial services (banking, re-insurance, and trading systems), commercial insurance, and state government. His core competencies include database design and implementation, OLTP, OLAP, and data warehouse design, project planning, and project management. Joseph is also a highly trusted, conceptual, business partner and leader with excellent presentation, negotiating, management, mentoring, and strategic planning skills.

Daniel Vimont, Senior Technical Representative

Daniel brings 30+ years experience in multiple computer languages, databases, frameworks, and distributed processing for mainframe, Cloud, and open systems. He is very familiar with the principles of ETL and CDC in mainframe data transformation and migration. Dan is a Certified AWS Cloud Practitioner and has experience in designing and developing AWS/SDK (boto3) framework for on-premises invocation/monitoring of AWS services. Additionally, Dan’s versatile background as a data and software engineer, educator, and business advisor is a valuable asset to Treehouse’s vision of being a close partner in our customers’ planning and modernization efforts.

Treehouse Software Experts are Our Best Assets

When asked by prospective customers, “What are your primary differentiators?”, we immediately point to our people who have decades worth of experience in helping mainframe customers with innovative tools, services, and training. Our extensive experience, deep knowledge, and wide-ranging capabilities in mainframe technologies make the company a valued partner for third-party solution providers and a trusted advisor to customers.

We are fortunate to have a staff with a wealth of knowledge and skills that span not only Mainframe, but Cloud, LUW, and Open Systems technologies. Treehouse Software‘s technicians have installed products and trained end-users in some of the largest mainframe sites around the world, and our highly-rated 24X7 technical support is second to none.

The Treehouse Team Approach

Treehouse Software’s expert staff has proven its ability to work effectively as part of a larger team to meet clients’ complex business goals. AWS, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Deloitte, Accenture, Confluent, and other large vendors have selected our expertise, technology, services, and training for their mainframe data modernization practices.

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Contact Treehouse Software Today…

Treehouse Software has been helping enterprises mainframe customers since 1982, and in recent years, we have been developing a strong presence in the Cloud market space relating to mainframe data replication and modernization. As a result, Treehouse Software is currently working with technical and sales leaders from all popular Cloud platform companies and major systems integrators to take advantage of our deep mainframe skills and our tcVISION Mainframe-to-Cloud data replication solution.

No matter where you want your mainframe data to go – the Cloud, Open Systems, or any LUW target –Treehouse Software is here to help. Contact us to discuss your needs.

Treehouse Software Onsite Training Classes are Available

New installation of a Treehouse Software product? New employees? Need a refresher course? Want to explore untapped product features? Three-to-five-day training sessions are available for tRelational / DPS and other Treehouse products.

Treehouse Software training sessions are customized to meet your site’s unique environment and needs. As an example, the following three-day tRelational / DPS training class was conducted at a large University where they are using tRelational / DPS to create an archive of their legacy Adabas data to Oracle in preparation for their upcoming mainframe system retirement.

Over the course of the three-day session, the Treehouse instructor covered:

• tRelational AUTOGEN feature (auto-generation of complete RDBMS schemata – Tables, Columns, Primary Key, and Foreign Keys – based upon existing ADABAS file structures). AUTOGEN was quite attractive since it will be a very time efficient way to create the Adabas-to-Oracle mappings.
• The customer wanted to use Relational / DPS to automate as much of the process as possible, and take advantage of the batch functions of tRelational. Generally, the workshops of the class are all online, but in this case, the class ran through one online example after the File Implementation section of the training, and then jumped to the batch section of the training to show how that works. The class then returned to run additional File Implementations, Analysis, and Reporting in batch.
• The class continued through the Modeling and Mapping section, and ran more batch jobs with some additional Adabas files.
• Admin and Configuring DPS Parameters sections were next on the agenda. Because of the desire to automate as much as possible, the work focused on how to set up a single job stream that could be generated programmatically, where it was fed in the name of the file to be implemented and then do the AUTOGEN all in the same job. The tRelational AUTOGEN user exit was set up so the customer could identify and cater to the possibility of duplicate table names where multiple Adabas files have the same named MU (like “COMMENTS”); and handle the addition of an ETR (external transformation routine) being automatically added (there were some known HEX values in some fields) and then update the DPSCOLLGTH.
• The class finished up the Materialization (initial loading of data) training section and then set up the jobs to run Materialization, and installed DPSSPLIT (used to separate the control and data files into one control and one data file per table materialized) on one of their servers. Generally, most class attendees are not the ones responsible for running the Materialization and Propagation (ongoing synchronization of data) jobs, so the instructor doesn’t usually set them up, but in this case, it made sense. The class started out by running the Materialization from a full database ADASAV taken over the weekend. The output of the Materialization job was FTPed to their Server and DPSSPLIT run against it to create the individual loader files. GENDDL (generate the control statements that can be passed to the RDBMS to define the tables and columns) was also run and that output transferred. After setting up the SQL job to process the DDL, the Oracle SQL*LOADER was successfully run to load the data.

Finally, the class went through some additional tRelational / DPS features, and as a final exercise, set up a Propagation job and ran it against a current PLOG just to make sure it worked satisfactorily.

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If you are interested in finding out more about Treehouse training classes for your product, contact Treehouse Software today for more information, or to schedule onsite training.

Treehouse Software Products and Professional Services for Adabas / Natural Help with ALLETE’s Mainframe Retirement

by Mike Kuechenberg, Senior Technical Representative at Treehouse Software, Inc.

Since 2010, Treehouse Software consultants have provided product training and Professional Services for the planned retirement of the mainframe environment at ALLETE.

Here’s a look at three parts of the project in which Treehouse was involved:

tRelational / DPS

In order to replicate Adabas data to Oracle, ALLETE licensed Treehouse’s tRelational / DPS product set. After some initial training by Treehouse Professional Services, ALLETE staff were able to model and map Adabas files to Oracle schemata using tRelational, and to deploy DPS jobs to materialize (ETL) and propagate (CDC) the Adabas data into Oracle. This continued until the final cutover to the new systems. Just before the mainframe was decommissioned, some additional Adabas files were materialized by Treehouse Professional Services for archival purposes.

DBA Consulting

Treehouse Professional Services took over the DBA responsibilities for ALLETE starting in September 2010. The responsibilities included Software AG product upgrades, daily checks on available database space and file extents, and requests from ALLETE staff like file restores, field maintenance, and any other request requiring DBA involvement.

Systems Support

Additionally, Treehouse Professional Services assumed responsibility for ALLETE’s mainframe systems programming activities. Tasks included monthly IPLs to the system, applying licenses to products, handling system error situations, defining new DASD, upgrading IBM and third-party products, providing periodic SOX reports, and handling other requests from ALLETE staff.

Conclusion of a Successful Engagement

As this five-year Treehouse Software / ALLETE partnership ends, we wish our friends all the best as they move forward with their new systems and strategies.

“During the time our companies have been working together, Treehouse personnel were always responsive and are experts in their fields. Thanks for the flexibility and great support over the years.”

– Eric Peterson, Manager, IT Infrastructure, ITS Systems, ALLETE Inc.

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About Treehouse Software Professional Services

Treehouse Professional Services offer a proven, cost-effective alternative to full-time in-house systems programmers, system administrators and DBAs. Using our team of experts and monitoring techniques, Treehouse offers world-class, on-site and remote system support and DBA service at affordable prices. Treehouse Professional Services offer various levels of system monitoring and administration. Our team will monitor critical factors within your Software AG environment, apply preventive maintenance for your systems and databases, and keep your software up-to-date. We even provide z/OS systems programming services! We are strongly committed to our customers’ success and we deliver the highest quality DBA and support solutions.

Visit the Treehouse Software website for more information on Treehouse Professional Services, or contact us to discuss your needs.

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About Treehouse Software’s tRelational / DPS Product Set

tRelational / DPS is a robust product set that provides modeling and data transfer of legacy ADABAS data into modern RDBMS-based platforms for Internet/Intranet/Business Intelligence applications. Treehouse Software designed these products to meet the demands of large, complex environments requiring product maturity, productivity, feature-richness, efficiency and high performance.

The tRelational component provides complete analysis, modeling and mapping of ADABAS files and data elements to the target RDBMS tables and columns. DPS (Data Propagation System) performs Extract, Transformation, and Load (ETL) functions for the initial bulk RDBMS load and incremental Change Data Capture (CDC) batch processing to synchronize ADABAS updates with the target RDBMS.

Visit the Treehouse Software website for more information on tRelational / DPS, or contact us to discuss your needs.

Need Some Help? Look to Treehouse Professional Services for Adabas / Natural

Since 1982, Treehouse Software has been a leader in helping Adabas/Natural customers with our outstanding software and services, for both mainframe and LUW (Linux/Unix/Windows) platforms.

With Treehouse Professional Services, you can benefit from our decades of experience in Adabas/Natural optimization, systems security, control, auditing, performance enhancement and application development and support.

Give us a call today, and tell us about your current Adabas/Natural situation, and we can discuss how Treehouse Professional Services can ease your company’s financial undertow.

You can’t afford to have your mission-critical Adabas/Natural systems compromised, even if resources have been limited by budgetary constraints or expertise shortages.

Our expert consultants can provide Adabas/Natural performance analysis, environment tuning and optimization; development, training and implementation services involving any Adabas/Natural-related technology; product installation, upgrades and training; data replication and integration; application rehosting and modernization; and DBA services.

Instantly benefit from Treehouse Software’s 30+ years Software AG experience with our On-Site and Remote DBA Services

The Treehouse On-site and Remote DBA Services offer a proven, cost-effective alternative to full-time in-house systems programmers, system administrators and DBAs. Using our team of experts and monitoring techniques, Treehouse offers world-class, on-site and remote system support and DBA service at affordable prices. Treehouse Remote DBA Services offer various levels of system monitoring and administration. Our team will monitor critical factors within your Software AG environment, apply preventive maintenance for your systems and databases and keep your software up-to-date. We even provide z/OS systems programming services! We are strongly committed to our customers’ success and we deliver the highest quality DBA and support solutions.

Boost your Adabas/Natural team’s abilities today!

Visit the Treehouse Software website for more information on Treehouse Professional Services, or contact us today to discuss your needs.

A Job Well-Done by Treehouse Software Consulting Services for Swiss Reinsurance Company, Ltd.

Since 2002, Treehouse Software consultants have provided DBA services for the Software AG (SAG) mainframe environment at Swiss Reinsurance Company, Ltd. (Swiss Re). Treehouse services included all SAG product support and upgrades for ADABAS, NATURAL, NATURAL Security, PREDICT, and COM-PLETE.

Additionally, Treehouse consultants installed the TRIM ADABAS and NATURAL Performance Monitor product to help in monitoring ADABAS and NATURAL usage, and the tRelational / DPS product set was used for converting and archiving Swiss Re’s ADABAS data as the new Oracle-based systems were implemented.

As this chapter of the long-time Treehouse Software / Swiss Re partnership has drawn to a close, we express our gratitude for having such a good and loyal customer, and we appreciate their sentiments towards us:

“Thank you for your professional and prompt DBA and support services to Swiss Re for the last many years. You have kept our systems on the most current level of software upgrades, helped us to successfully migrate our mainframe from in-house facilities to an outside provider, as well as migrate from the Toronto system to a global platform-based L&H system, and finally provided archival data extracts for the total decommissioning of the Toronto system.

At all stages we have received excellent and cost-effective services from Treehouse.

We sincerely thank each one of you for helping us achieve our goals. Best wishes for the future.”

Sheila Gupta
Vice President, Information Technology
Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd.

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About Treehouse Software Consulting Services

At Treehouse Software, our business is mainframe systems software and services. We know that organizations using mainframe systems for their business operations are feeling the pressure to be more efficient and to contribute to overall enterprise cost savings, and we’re here to help.

Customers can take advantage of Treehouse’s decades of experience in mainframe optimization, systems security, control, auditing, performance enhancement, etc. Our Mainframe Consulting and Remote DBA Services can be a life-saver when dwindling financial and human resources make it difficult to maintain past levels of IT services for an organization.

Treehouse Software’s expert consultants can provide ADABAS/NATURAL performance analysis, environment tuning, and optimization; development, training and implementation services involving any Software AG technology; help with special routines or user exits for ADABAS/NATURAL; product installation, upgrades, and training; data transfer and integration; and DBA services.

Contact Treehouse Software for more information on our Consulting Services.

A Helping Hand and a Partner: Treehouse Software Consulting and DBA Services

by Wayne Lashley, Chief Business Development Officer for Treehouse Software and Joseph Brady, Marketing and Documentation Manager for Treehouse Software

Many organizations using ADABAS/NATURAL and other technologies on mainframes and open systems are feeling the pressure to be more efficient, and to contribute to overall enterprise cost savings. However, with retirements, hiring freezes, budget constraints, and scarcity of qualified expertise, it is becoming more and more challenging to find cost effective ways to maintain current levels of service and reliability.

Fortunately, these organizations can take advantage of Treehouse Software‘s decades of experience in database administration, systems programming and mainframe optimization.

Feel Like You Are Being Pulled Under?

Give us a call today to tell us about your current situation, and a Treehouse representative will conduct simple and short interviews with key employees of your organization to understand what issues you would like to address. We will then follow up with a brief report on how Treehouse Consulting and DBA Services can help you meet your IT goals with an affordable and reliable solution.

Grab a Treehouse Lifeline

Treehouse Software consultants are experts in z/OS and z/VSE environments, and especially in ADABAS/NATURAL deployments on both mainframe and open systems. Treehouse Consulting and DBA Services can deliver benefits in:

• Focused IT strategy
• Savings in time, resources and operating costs
• Empowerment of current IT staff

Examples of Treehouse Services:

• On-site and remote ADABAS/NATURAL DBA Services on mainframes and open systems, including monitoring, preventive maintenance and administration

• ADABAS/NATURAL performance analysis, environment tuning, and optimization

• Development, training and implementation services involving any Software AG technology

• Special routines or user exits for ADABAS/NATURAL

• Software product installation, upgrades, and training

• Data replication, migration and integration

• 24-hour telephone support

• Software upgrades

• Ongoing NATURAL SECURITY administration services

• Analysis, consultation, and recommendations on Software AG product performance and tuning, NATURAL coding approaches, ADABAS file design and feature usage, and related matters

• Participation in disaster recovery tests

• Participation in actual disaster recovery in the event of a declared disaster

• Mainframe support (z/OS support, MVS support, OS/390 support, z/VSE support)

• Mainframe upgrade assistance (z/OS upgrade, MVS upgrade, OS/390 upgrade, z/VSE upgrade)

• Mainframe outsourcing

• Mainframe specialist assistance (z/OS specialist, MVS specialist, OS/390 specialist, z/VSE specialist)

• z/OS systems programming

• Assembler programming

• SMP/E assistance

• Mainframe security assistance (RACF assistance, Top Secret assistance, ACF2 assistance)

• z/PDT support, ADCD support

• Mainframe software maintenance

Let’s Talk!

We’re ready to discuss your needs. If you have any questions or need more information on Treehouse Consulting and Remote DBA Services, contact us today!