John - (01)
On Sep 18, 2010, at 6:22 PM, John F. Sowa wrote: (02)
> DMcD> Something I would like to know, but seriously doubt if I'll ever
>> learn, is how these technical dispersed environments sync up their
>> changes. I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt if there's a
>> software configuration management (SCM) tool that natively handles
>> Windows/Unix/AS400/mainframe in one fell swoop.
>
> That will never happen.
>
> The only things that those programs "synch up" with other programs
> are data formats, entity names, units of measure, and terminologies. (03)
I'd be more than happy with something that would look at the various
data structures in different environments & flag them as "possibly
similar"... to encourage human inspection before making yet another
redundant data structure. (04)
> Note slide 4: The amount of legacy software in current use is half
> a trillion lines of code. Slide 7 notes that the typical cost to
> produce one line of fully debugged code is $18 to $45. The great
> bulk of that code will still be running 20 years from now, and
> some will still be in daily use 50 years from now. (05)
Strong agreement. (06)
In 20 years people will be cursing the brain dead idiots who wrote
the spaghetti Java/.NET code in this legacy system. (07)
>> I have recently conducted an informal survey... and learned
>> in no uncertain terms that "inventory/impact analysis" is NOT
>> something to discuss. People DO NOT CARE.
>>
>
> Some do care.
>
> Note slides 91 to 98, which discuss a method for analyzing both
> the legacy software and documentation for e large corporation
> (on the Fortune 1000 list). That project analyzed and compared
> 1.5 million lines of COBOL code and 100 megabytes of miscellaneous
> documentation, some of which was up to 40 years old.
>
> Those tools aren't yet widely used, but that kind of technology
> is at the research level today, and it will become more widely
> available as time goes by. (08)
I did have a run at the reverse engineering market in the early
1990s. Wonderful education. (09)
I'm not attempting to be flip or dismissive here, this comment is
simply for scale, but 1.5M LoC is pretty much rounding error in a
software portfolio. I would argue to seriously tackle software
portfolio modernization, the place to start is with getting a handle
on the inventory of applications. I would argue the applications
most likely overlap & intersect in unacknowledged ways. (010)
Worst example I have at hand was an organization that found 10
production JCL libraries & 73 production source libraries. Nothing
new to DLL hell, eh? (011)
An language—not necessarily ontologies—cuts across all this. What
DID they mean by that cryptic acronym/abbreviation? (012)
___________________
David Eddy
deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (013)
781-455-0949 (014)
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