Enterprise Systems Architecture

Not really a typical Enterprise Systems Architecture(EA)topic - but I thought I would share - may add value to some of you!

The following blog appeared on my previous blog site (August 2015) and I thought I would repost on this site  I have just finished a 7 month assignment, which originally started as a short 4 week consultancy assignment for a company ladened with ‘Green Screens’. Working there reminded me of the early 80’s when I worked at a British Bank writing queries on the IBM 3090 mainframes & GEAC Mini using both Easytrieve and   KARL , to produce similar code logic to validate the Banks Lease migration data. Earlier this year I produced a ‘briefing note’, in which I suggested a technical direction for the AS400 platform and how the  Report Program Generator   (RPG) could / should be transposed to the updated iSeries JAVA platform – today’s blog is a slight re-use of extracts from the original note with the aim of sharing some thoughts on giving a legacy AS400 system a new lease of life through the extension and refactoring of core software components. My client continues to add to its technic

The following appeared on my previous blog site on January 6th 2014 and received in excess of 16K hits per annum - so reposting on new site.  Earlier today, while reviewing a document I produced some time ago, I discovered a useful Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) checklist and thought I would simplify , ‘repackage’ and share via this blog. NFR checklists are not unique products, they are easily found on the web with numerous examples available for reuse, one such example can be found at the Open Group’s website under the ToGAF Requirements Management section. Most of you are probably familiar with NFR’s – However if not, you can consider them a set of requirements/criteria used during the run-time operation of a system and not the specific behaviours that the system must exert. The NFR’s vary in importance and are usually  aligned to the  context of the system  e.g. Operational Safety could be classed as a NFR, especially when working in hazardous conditions (Oil Rigs, Gas Plants etc

The following blog appeared on my previous blog site - November 2013    Recently I was approached by the owner of a medium sized organisation, who wished to develop a “small” application they felt would both add value to the current customer base and maybe, if sold or given away, would promote other value adding services of the company. Having commissioned software development by third parties outside of the UK  on several occasions, I was well positioned to respond to a simple request for guidance and did so in the form of an e-mail. I was pleasantly surprised with the information in my response and now ‘repackage’ and share with you… The response was by no means a complete approach on developing an idea with a 3 rd  party supplier, as clearly there is  no one size fits all solution , however it provides a  baseline  to start from. However my response captured some salient points and golden nuggets of information which I discuss briefly below. The initial recommendation was to decompo