This is technology sharing.
Here is a really innovative way to use Rochade beyond what is available through Autopilot and WEB Access (ASG latest attempt at a WEB browser). RoAccess lets you take advantage of Rochade the way it was meant to be used.
This came from a project that is for the worlds largest software payroll system, the joint military payroll system of the US Department of Defense. It will also handle configuration and change management life cycle policies, procedures and forms for future development and maintenance of all these systems. We're talking over time of potentially thousands of Subject Areas and constantly changing Hierarchies for versioning. It was found the standard ASG's application level approach to versioning could not be used.
Since this is a US government contract, its results are "public domain". So I though I'd pass it along.
Rochade was selected because of its versioning capabilities, and RoAccess was selected because of ASG said developing using WEB Access could not meet the aggressive schedule, and had RoAccess had a history of application development successes from its customer base.
First of all, if you have talked with other Rochade customers and looked at the ASG documentation of their Hierarchical Subject Areas, and all the administration that is required, you know it's not for the timid. And we've found almost no customers who are currently using Hierarchical Subject Areas, probably for that reason. They are complicated and problematic. However, they don't have to be!
Initially, ASG Hierarchical Subject Areas (HSAs) were chosen for this project as the approach to versioning. However, during implementation , the ASG representative and the rest of us became aware of some “show stopper” limitations imposed by the way ASG implemented Hierarchical Subject Areas. We found we needed to be able to re-graft entire branches of Subject Areas, delete Subject Areas in the middle of a hierarchy tree, substitute Subject Areas, and a number of other operations that ASG’s Hierarchical Subject Areas just do not permit. We needed to be able to create, delete, modify, rearrange and change configurations and hierarchies frequently and conveniently.
When the ASG representative informed us that he had reached some "show stopper" crisis level problems with ASG’s Hierarchical Subject Areas, RoAccess created an alternative approach to using hierarchies. It turns out the Rochade Repository Engine has an incredible amount of potential, which is but only partly tapped by ASG’s implementation of Hierarchical Subject Areas.
In response to this crisis, RoAccess developed what is called Virtual Hierarchical Subject Areas. With this you can create, modify, re-graft branches, and delete hierarchies on the fly. And you don’t need to use Autopilot at all to do any of this!
Imagine a normal ASG Hierarchical Subject Area that exists only at run-time and can be different the next time you run it. And the configuration paths and branches can be changed as are needed. A Virtual Hierarchical Subject Area is one that is available for use, but really does not really physically exist. It exists logically, not physically.
Suppose you have 100 Subject Areas, each having the metadata of a single, different data source, possible Oracle, Sybase, DB2, MSAccess, or any number of proprietary databases. Normally one might consider making a consolidated Subject Area that has ALL the data of ALL of these Subject Areas. But when you work with large Subject Areas, you find exporting, backing up and maintaining it becomes increasingly difficult as size increases. Then importing and integrating the next round of scanned metadata can become extremely involved. Being able to keep all the Subject Areas separate would be a great advantage.
Using standard Rochade versioning, you can create the Union of multiple Subject Areas on the fly, that might be thought of as a Virtual Subject Area. That is, the composite Virtual Subject Area will look like it contains all the data of the underlying Subject Areas, but in actually it doesn’t! It merely allows the various underlying Subject Areas to have their data visible. But after all, that is what versioning was created to do, and makes Rochade so useful. This is not really versioning of Items, but it is the result of using the same technology just the way the Rochade documentation says to.
Subject Area A – Has Oracle ItemTypes for Application System Payroll Subset A.
Subject Area B – Has Oracle ItemTypes for Application System Payroll Subset B.
Subject Area C – Has Cobol copybooks
Subject Area D – Has mainframe JCL and PROCS
Subject Area E – has Library information.
Each Subject Area is based on a different RIM and has different ItemTypes.
Now, supposed you want to run a single impact analysis that spans all of these 5 Subject Areas. You can’t do it using Autopilot or WEB Access, because reports and procedures do not span Subject Areas. You would have to create a composite Subject Area, and physically copy or share all the Items. You could try a hierarchy, but you cannot move an existing Subject Area into a hierarchy, although you could try copying or sharing all the Items.. And later when the next scan of metadata comes in, what do you do? Again, more steps, more error prone procedures if you you use the traditional ASG Hierarchical Subject Area approach. This is clearly way to complicated!
Using the RoAccess Virtual approach, you merely create a Virtual Hierarchy Subject Area that has these 5 Subject Areas in it. That’s it. (No ASG Hierarchical Subject Area is needed!) It would take you maybe a minute max to set it up Virtually, and your enterprise wide and Subject Area spanning reports are now easy. You made a virtual composite Subject Area. When you later have a newer version of say Subject Area A, you merely change the Virtual Subject Area's configuration path to have that new Subject Area's work configuration and you’re done. No copying, no sharing, no creating new versions of Subject Areas. You have just effectively deleted one Subject Area and substituted a different one in about 5 seconds.
The RoAccess Virtual approach really shows the power of Rochade.
Now suppose you have at the beginning of the next month the "latest" version of all of these 5 Subject Areas, and you want to compare them with the previous ones.
You create a Virtual HSA with only the original Subject Area A and new Subject Area A and instantly compare them. Then you can create a Virtual HSA with all the original 5 (earlier metadata base) then on top of them overlay the latest 5 (current scanned metadata). You can do versioning over long periods of time. Notice, the Subject Area A belongs to TWO Virtual Hierarchical Subject Areas at the SAME TIME: the one with the original "A" and the one with the original composite. This cannot be done with ASG’s Hierarchical Subject Areas. But it can with using basic Rochade and RoAccess.
After you have say 20 or 100 different versions in a hierarchy, how do you delete the oldest one (the top of the tree) to make room for newer versions that will be added to the lower levels? Using ASG's HSAs, you can't.
When we consider there may be 300 to 1000 Subject Areas, we will occasionally want to transfer Subject Areas and Virtual Hierarchies to tape, no problem. If you are using Virtual HSAs, you can copy them to tape, and delete them from the Virtual Hierarchy. (Using ASG's HSAs, you can't.)
Later if we need to fetch a prior version or hierarchy off tape and insert into the middle current tree and try it at different places in the hierarchy, no problem with Virtual Hierarchical Subject Areas. (Using ASG's HSAs, you can't.)
So if you go the "Virtual" route, you have is the FULL power of the Repository, without having to find a way to live with the constraints of what ASG provides you using their "standard" Hierarchical Subject Areas.
Suppose you have 126 Subject Areas that are already loaded with data from different sources or are different versions of the same metadata. You want to create a ASG Hierarchical Subject Area utilizing them all. Imagine the steps: create Subject Area in a hierarchy, copying or sharing the contents of each Subject Area (time consuming) using the configurations report, add the users, user classes and profiles as necessary. Set it IN-WORK. Now do this 126 times. At 1 per minute, were talking 2 hours if you are on a really fast system and the Subject Areas are small. What have you gained? Sort of 126 new Subject Areas.
Now, using the RoAccess Virtual Approach: in less than one to two minutes, you are are finished! And NO new Subject Areas have to be created.
No comparison! Voila, you're done in record time.
(Note: Although you can have a maximum of 100,000,000 configurations (Subject Areas), you can only have a maximum of 126 in a configuration path at any one time, per the $SELCFG instruction. This is a Rochade maximum, per the V6.0 documentation. That's where the 126 comes from.)
The Rochade engine has incredible versioning capabilities. If you set the configuration path yourself, you have begun.
The configuration path defines the hierarchy. So you set the configuration path whatever you want it to be.
The CHAPTYPS and DOCTYPS must be set appropriately to tell the Rochade Engine which ItemTypes and Attributes you wish to permit access to. This is a little unusual for those new to Rochade, but this is a automatic in RoAccess.
Lastly you can set the users, user classes and ItemType profiles in place depending on what you want to accomplish for this Virtual System.
It turns out, RoAccess' Virtual Virtual Subject Areas and Virtual Hierarchical Subject Areas does all this for you, and it is incredibly easy to use. Almost nothing new to learn. You can create this capability using RPL programming yourself if you don't use RoAccess, but why spend the effort? It comes free with RoAccess.
The best part, is if you need even more capability that RoAccess' Virtual Hierarchical Subject Areas, you have the source code to RoAccess. Change or extend whatever is necessary to meet your business requirements.
Don't let your tool sets limit your ability to meet your business needs. You have a powerful Rochade Engine. Take advantage of it!