Treehouse Software Sponsors June Pittsburgh Amazon Web Services (AWS) User Group Meetup

By Joseph Brady, Marketing Manager and AWS Alliance Lead for Treehouse Software

Treehouse Software sponsored the June AWS User Group Meetup at AlphaLab in Pittsburgh. AlphaLab is a nationally ranked software accelerator in Pittsburgh. They help early-stage tech companies quickly figure out the best way to build and grow in a program with funding, early-stage technology companies with an extensive mentor network, educational sessions with industry leaders, and a rich entrepreneurial work environment within a nationally ranked accelerator program.

Food, drinks, and technical presentation were courtesy of Treehouse Software. The AlphaLab space was very nice and spacious, with a full kitchen and a large bar for everybody to hang out and talk while enjoying a great spread of food and drinks. This was an ideal setting for ice-breaking and socializing with attendees.

As is usual for the AWS User Group, the attendees ranged from students to consultants and DBAs, all wanting to learn about what can be done on the AWS Cloud.

After some food, drinks, and a bit of socializing, Jim Jen, Executive Director of AlphaLab started things off with a short AlphaLab welcome and introduction.

Next, Andy Jones, Senior Technical Representative for Treehouse Software presented “tcVISION Technical Overview and AWS Cloud Environment Replication Demonstration”. Andy told a little about Treehouse, our AWS partnership, and an overview of tcVISION with a mention of the tcVISION Amazon Machine Image (AMI) development work that is going on right now with support from a top AWS Solutions Architect. At the end of Andy’s presentation, interest was sufficient for him to give a tcVISION live demo, where he showed everybody tcVISION replicating data from the Treehouse mainframe to AWS Aurora in the Cloud.

Typical Treehouse Mainframe-to-AWS data replication scenario in a demo:

We ended the evening with a little more eating, drinking, and socializing, and a mention that Treehouse Software will be exhibiting the tcVISION/AWS Solution at AWS re:Invent in November.

Thanks to everyone who attended, helped, and participated!

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Find out more about tcVISION — Enterprise ETL and Real-Time Data Replication Through Change Data Capture

tcVISION supports a vast array of integration scenarios throughout the enterprise, providing easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects and enabling bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms. This innovative technology offers comprehensive abilities to identify and capture changes occurring in mainframe and relational databases, then publish the required information to an impressive variety of targets, both on-premise and Cloud-based.

tcVISION acquires data in bulk or via change data capture methods, including in real time, from virtually any IBM mainframe data source (Software AG Adabas, IBM Db2, IBM VSAM, IBM IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA Datacom, even sequential files), and transform and deliver to virtually any target. In addition, the same product can extract and replicate data to/from a variety of non-mainframe sources, including AWS, PostgreSQL, Adabas LUW, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM Db2 LUW and Db2 BLU, and IBM Informix.

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

 

 

Treehouse Software Customers are Looking Upwards to Mainframe-to-Cloud Data Replication

The search is on for a mature, easy-to-implement Extract Transform and Load (ETL) solution for migrating mission critical data to the cloud.

Treehouse Software’s tcVISION supports a vast array of integration scenarios throughout the enterprise, providing easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects, and enabling data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms. This innovative technology offers comprehensive abilities to identify and capture changes occurring in mainframe and relational databases, then publish the required information to an impressive variety of targets, both on-premise and cloud-based.

Mainframe-to-Cloud Case Use Example…

BAWAG P.S.K. is one of the largest banks in Austria, with more than 1.6 million private and business customers and is a well-known brand in the country. Their business strategy is oriented towards low risk and high efficiency.

BAWAG was looking to reduce the load on their IBM mainframe and as a result, reduce costs. The project involved offloading data from their core database system to a less expensive system, in real-time, and to provide read access from that system to the new infrastructure. The primary motivator for this data migration was the constantly increasing CPU costs on the mainframe caused by the growing transaction load of online banking, mobile banking, and the use of self service devices.

BAWAG ultimately migrated their online banking application to the cloud using tcVISION. Realtime Event-handling, Realtime Analytics, Realtime Fraud Prevention are only a few of the use cases that the bank’s solution currently covers.

The bank decided to use tcVISION to migrate z/OS DB2 data into a Hadoop data lake (a storage repository that holds raw data in its native format). 20 Million transactions were made within 15 minutes.

Cost Reductions Seen Immediately

BAWAG is now seeing a 35-40 percent reduction of the MIPS consumption for online processing during business hours. After hours, consumption is less, because it is mainly batch processing on the mainframe. Currently, a volume of approximately 30 GB changed data (uncompressed) is replicated from DB2 per day.

In addition to the primary usage scenario, BAWAG can also cover additional use cases. This includes real-time-event handling and stream processing, analytics based upon real-time data as well as the possibility to report and analyze structured and unstructured data with excellent performance. The system can be inexpensively operated on Commodity Hardware and has no scalability limitations. Compared to the savings, the costs of replication (CPU consumption) of tcVISION are now very low.

Additionally, BAWAG plans to extend the use of tcVISION in the future, including implementation of real-time replication from ORACLE into the data lake.

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Find out more about tcVISION — Enterprise ETL and Real-Time Data Replication Through Change Data Capture

tcVISION supports a vast array of integration scenarios throughout the enterprise, providing easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects and enabling bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms. This innovative technology offers comprehensive abilities to identify and capture changes occurring in mainframe and relational databases, then publish the required information to an impressive variety of targets, both on-premise and Cloud-based.

tcVISION acquires data in bulk or via change data capture methods, including in real time, from virtually any IBM mainframe data source (Software AG Adabas, IBM DB2, IBM VSAM, IBM IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA Datacom, even sequential files), and transform and deliver to virtually any target. In addition, the same product can extract and replicate data from a variety of non-mainframe sources, including Adabas LUW, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 LUW and DB2 BLU, IBM Informix and PostgreSQL.

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

Treehouse Software Eases the Challenges for Mainframe-to-Modern Platform Transformation Programs for Systems Integrators

Unlock Your Customers’ Business Value Faster with Frequent Production Deliveries, Using Agile Methods

Treehouse Software’s product, tcVISION has proven to be vital for the ease and success of many mainframe modernization initiatives.

A big problem for a Systems Integrator (SI), or any mainframe modernization vendor, is the myriad of dependencies between mainframe and open systems data and components. As part of a mainframe modernization project, these vendors need to determine the ordering of phases or waves of applications to be migrated. There are often shared databases that can make it very difficult to move one set of applications without moving others. This can result in the conclusion that they must go with a “big bang” approach, which can lead to a bid for a program with one large delivery at the end with all of the integrated components in place. This is very unappealing to customers as they are paying out big dollars without the corresponding business value of a production deployment. This approach also significantly increases the project risk.

With Treehouse Software’s bi-directional replication product, tcVISION, a subset of applications can be migrated, and tcVISION’s data synchronization capabilities can be used to bridge specific shared legacy mainframe databases to the modern database versions on open systems. This allows them to deliver in phases, thus getting modernized modules in production faster. In addition, it decreases risk as issues can be found much faster with the more frequent production deployments. When the last modules are deployed to production, they would no longer need the synchronization.

As an example, a large Treehouse customer is currently involved in gradually modernizing and replacing a set of applications, and is using a similar approach. The customer will be using their mainframe Adabas database synced with Oracle on Linux, while in the process of modernizing the applications. Treehouse Software’s experts and tcVISION product are making sure the customer’s transition goes smoothly and seamlessly.

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Enterprise ETL and Real-Time Data Replication Between Virtually Any Source and Target

tcVISION supports a vast array of integration scenarios throughout the enterprise, providing easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects and enabling bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms. This innovative technology offers comprehensive abilities to identify and capture changes occurring in mainframe and relational databases, then publish the required information to an impressive variety of targets, both on-premise and Cloud-based.

tcVISION acquires data in bulk or via change data capture methods, including in real time, from virtually any IBM mainframe data source (Software AG Adabas, IBM DB2, IBM VSAM, IBM IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA Datacom, sequential files), and transform and deliver to virtually any target. In addition, the same product can extract and replicate data from a variety of non-mainframe sources, including Adabas LUW, Hadoop/HDFS, MongoDB, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 LUW and DB2 BLU, IBM Informix, PostgreSQL, etc.

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

TREETIP: tcVISION now supports IAM Files – a solution of Innovation Data Processing

“The Innovation Access Method (IAM) is a transparent alternative to VSAM KSDS, ESDS, and (as a cost option) to AIX and RRDS files. The savings achieved over VSAM can vary, but IAM typically uses 40-80% less I/Os, 20-70% less CPU and 30-70% less DASD. Savings in batch elapsed times and online response times can range from 20-80%.“ (INNOVATION Data Processing)

Users of IAM files now have the possibility of replicating data into any DBMS and NoSQL DBMS systems in the distributed systems environment as well as into Cloud and Hadoop platforms in real-time with tcVISION. Thus, the latest technology can easily be used for Analytics and Business Intelligence. tcVISION also supports bidirectional synchronization between IAM files and DBMS in the distributed environment. Therefore data between Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 LUW, Informix, Adabas LUW can be synchronized in real-time without programming effort. The transparent integration of IAM files in a heterogeneous system environment can be easily and quickly implemented.

Find out more about tcVISION — Enterprise ETL and Real-Time Data Replication Through Change Data Capture

tcVISION provides easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects and enables bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms.

tcVISION acquires data in bulk or via change data capture methods, including in real time, from virtually any IBM mainframe data source (Software AG Adabas, IBM DB2, IBM VSAM, IBM IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA Datacom, even sequential files), and transform and deliver to virtually any target. In addition, the same product can extract and replicate data from a variety of non-mainframe sources, including Adabas LUW, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 LUW and DB2 BLU, IBM Informix and PostgreSQL.

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

TREETIP: Integrate Mainframe Data Sources In Your Big Data Initiatives

tcVISION supports a vast array of integration scenarios throughout the enterprise, providing easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects and enabling bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms. This innovative technology offers comprehensive abilities to identify and capture changes occurring in mainframe and relational databases, then publish the required information to an impressive variety of targets, both on-premise and Cloud-based.

Analysts have observed that perhaps 80 percent of the world’s corporate data still resides on mainframes. So it’s no surprise that Bloor Research (http://www.bloorresearch.com/research/spotlight/big-data-and-the-mainframe/), notes that “it is necessary today to place the mainframe as a ‘first-class player’ in any enterprise Big Data strategy.”

In February 2017 we highlighted tcVISION’s support for replication to the leading NoSQL database MongoDB. MongoDB continues to increase in popularity as a back end for operational applications with real-time requirements.

tcVISION also supports analytics and “mainframe offload” Big Data use cases that generally leverage Hadoop HDFS and/or streaming data transport. With tcVISION, data from a wide variety of IBM mainframe data source can be quickly and easily replicated to Big Data targets, requiring minimal mainframe know-how and having minimal impact on the mainframe.

Boost the return on investment for your Big Data initiatives using tcVISION!

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Find out more about tcVISION — Enterprise ETL and Real-Time Data Replication Through Change Data Capture

tcVISION provides easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects and enables bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms.

tcVISION acquires data in bulk or via change data capture methods, including in real time, from virtually any IBM mainframe data source (Software AG Adabas, IBM DB2, IBM VSAM, IBM IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA Datacom, even sequential files), and transform and deliver to virtually any target. In addition, the same product can extract and replicate data from a variety of non-mainframe sources, including Adabas LUW, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 LUW and DB2 BLU, IBM Informix, and PostgreSQL.

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

TREETIP: tcVISION Allows for Surprisingly Innovative Uses

Treehouse Professional Services consultants help Adabas / Natural customers in a variety of ways, including DBA services, performance tuning, change management implementation and training, and data replication planning and training. Our experience and long history of service to the Adabas / Natural community helps us create innovative solutions for our customers’ challenges.

Recently Treehouse Senior Technical Representative Chris Rudolph assisted a customer with a tricky data replication problem. The customer uses tcVISION to perform bi-directional replication between Adabas and an RDBMS during the phase-in of a new application. Unfortunately, the new application incorrectly updated certain columns in the RDBMS, which were then replicated to Adabas. The customer attempted to address the issue by running a series of ADASEL reports against the Adabas PLOG and manually checking for “bad” transactions, which was a very time consuming process that pulled the Adabas DBA away from her normal duties.

Chris explained that tcVISION could expedite the process by replicating all transactions for the Adabas file to a journal table capturing the “before” and “after” values of the problematic columns. The developers working on the new application could then identify invalid values, correct the application, and patch the data themselves. This also allowed the Adabas DBA to return to their normal duties.

The journal table now includes columns to display the “before” and “after” values of the corrupted column, Adabas transaction time, end transaction time, operation and Adabas userid. The customer’s developers immediately recognized immense value from being able to query the journal table to find bad data, patch the data, prove that corruption is no longer taking place, and verify that all corrupted instances of the data have been patched. Journal tables have been added for all replicated Adabas files, and the developers now rely on the journal tables for all of their data patches.

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Find out more about tcVISION — Enterprise ETL and Real-Time Data Replication Through Change Data Capture

tcVISION provides easy and fast data migration for mainframe application modernization projects and enables bi-directional data replication between mainframe, Linux, Unix and Windows platforms.

tcVISION acquires data in bulk or via change data capture methods, including in real time, from virtually any IBM mainframe data source (Software AG Adabas, IBM DB2, IBM VSAM, IBM IMS/DB, CA IDMS, CA Datacom, even sequential files), and transform and deliver to virtually any target. In addition, the same product can extract and replicate data from a variety of non-mainframe sources, including Adabas LUW, Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 LUW and DB2 BLU, IBM Informix and PostgreSQL.

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