Case Study:
Northampton Borough Council
Northampton Borough Council (NBC) decided to undertake a major upgrade of their computer systems, phasing out some older systems and replacing them with modern software. This included the decision to end the use of their Fujitsu VME Nova mainframe and the applications that ran on it.
They wanted to retain the information held on these legacy systems, but converting all the old data into the format required by the replacement applications was not viewed as cost effective. NBC therefore went out to tender to find a company able to provide a data archiving solution.
NSC Programming Ltd won the contract by submitting a proposal to use their unique DataNovata tool, which enables them to quickly create a feature-rich archiving system to view any Relational Database. NSC were also able to show their considerable expertise in migrating data from VME applications, using their tool PowerDrive to create the SQL Server database.
The Applications
| Discontinued | Replaced by |
|---|---|
| CTAX - Council Tax | Northgate's SX3 |
| HBIS - Housing & Council Tax Benefits | Northgate's SX3 |
| OAP - Orders & Payments | Agresso Business World |
| UNIPAY/PER - Payroll & Personnel | Agresso Business World |
| PALS - Public Authority Ledger System | Agresso Business World |
| HREP - Housing Repairs | IBS Open Systems |
| IHSL - Integrated Housing Rentals & Lettings | IBS Open Systems |
| IRAS-SI - Sundry Incomes | IRAS SI SQL Server |
Totalling 15 Gigabytes of VME data to be archived on a SQL Database.
The Project
The project started in August 2007, and by March 2008 all 15 Gigabytes of VME data had been migrated to SQL Server. NSC were able to include in the scope of the project extra systems not in the original Invitation to Tender. These had been running on a Sun Server under Solaris.
| Discontinued | Replaced by |
|---|---|
| Uniclass Classic - On Sun Solaris | IBS Open Systems |
| Uniclass Enterprise - On Sun Solaris | IBS Open Systems |
The work was done at NSC's Manchester offices by remote access to the VME mainframe and Windows server, moving the data from both IDMSX and flat files to SQL Server. The final stage was to set up DataNovata to access the data in a format required by NBC users.
The new Orders & Payments system,
providing easy access to all the data
The decommissioning plans for the Fujitsu VME mainframe meant that all the data had to be migrated and available on the newly created SQL Server databases by March 2008. This was not without its challenges. For example, some of the enquiry screens contained complex calculations. Although NSC had agreed to replicate these enquiries NBC did not always have the source code of the original application. Some interesting detective work was employed to overcome such obstacles successfully.
NSC’s involvement left NBC’s staff free to concentrate on implementing their new software applications, by providing them with one easy solution to access data previously held on eight different systems on a decommissioned mainframe. NBC took the decision to upgrade IRAS-SI Sundry Incomes, an NSC product running under VME, with a modern version available on Windows SQL Server.
Summary
DataNovata is a 20 man year development by NSC Programming Ltd. It tackles and solves the widespread problem faced by many organisations that move to new 21st century systems but are still required by law to have access to the data of the past. The savings, compared to the cost of continuing to run old hardware and paying licence fees for the old software, make the purchase of the DataNovata tool a good investment for many organisations that are modernising their IT systems.