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Pacific Southwestern Regional SAG User Group (PSWUG)

The mission of the Pacific Southwestern Regional Software AG Users Group is to provide members an active network to share their knowledge, problems and solutions with others in the region who use Software AG products. Guests from other User Groups are always welcome.

We also strive to provide free education in "On the Edge Technology" from Software AG and various partner vendors.

And lastly, to provide Software AG with a link to the Southwestern user community to gain insight into their needs and to promote dialogue concerning the use and future of Software AG products.

Conference Info

The next conference is scheduled for 30 October 2007 at the Capital Group in Irvine, CA

Presentations from the following areas are planned (tentative):

ADABAS
Natural
WebMethods
Natural for Ajax
SOA, MDA, ESB, Eclipse

And the conference is FREE to all members. Yes, you are a member. A continental breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be provided. Parking is on the facility's parking lot and is free.

Giveaways to be included.

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Agenda for 30 October 2007

Pacific SouthWest
Regional Software AG User Group Meeting

The Capital Group, Irvine, CA

Map of Capital Group's Campus and Guide

08:00 - 08:30	Registration and Continental Breakfast
08:30 - 09:00	Greetings, User Group business Dieter Storr, PSW User Group President
09:00 - 09:15	SAG Update By ........(SAG)
09:15 - 10:15	NATURAL for AJAX By Patrick Gould, Software AG (confirmed) This presentation will cover the details about Natural for AJAX (NJX), its specifications and how it works. The Demonstration will cover the architecture required for NJX, how to build and deploy a web page and how to run the page in a live demo. Products demonstrated in the demo are Natural for AJAX (NJX) Natural for Eclipse (NFE), Natural for Windows, Natural Development Server (NDV), Natural Web I/O Server (NWO) and Natural on the Host (Mainframe or Linux)
10:30 - 11:30	SOA Problems and its Solution (confirmed) By Arne Gerhard, innoWake, Inc., San Francisco, a SAG Partner Even though SOA is regarded as the solution to today's and tomorrow's diverse and heterogeneous enterprise systems, it comes at a price. Getting a grip on the many pieces of the puzzle has become increasingly complex and expensive, way beyond what an individual can handle. Implementing change in such a system further complicates the matter. Flexibility and investment protection come at the cost of maintainability. In this presentation you will be able to see why model-driven development (MDD) is a solution to this dilemma. It enables companies to keep the maintenance cost down, reuse existing legacy technology, and be prepared for advances in UI development without having to retrain staff. A short demo of a modernized Natural and Adabas application gives you the hands-on knowledge that MDD works in the real world.
11:45 - 12:45	The Baby Boomer Exodus: Why the Common View is the Wrong View (and what you can do about it) By Jim Fowler, Software AG (confirmed) Most of the hand-wringing around the so-called IT workforce shortage has focused on the projected impact of the Baby Boom generation’s retirement on specific skills areas such as the availability of COBOL programmers. However, the skills aspect of this inevitable generational shift is actually the least worrisome. Two other areas – domain knowledge and mission-critical expertise – are likely to have a more immediate and more significant impact on individual organizations. Based upon 20 years of IT experience, Jim Fowler will explore each of these three areas of concern to IT leaders and provide practical steps to head-off serious consequences.
12:45- 13:45	Lunch
13:45 - 14:45	NATURAL By Patrick Gould, Software AG (confirmed) Natural 4 Enhancements - Operational Enhancements - Enhancements to Natural commands, editors, etc. - Natural performance tips using Prefetch/Multifetch (online and batch) - SYSOBJH, briefly
15:00 - 16:00	ADABAS 8.1.2 on the mainframe and v6.1.1 on Windows By Dieter Storr, Storr Consulting (confirmed) This presentation is based on first experiences at the City of Vienna, Austria. It shows problems with the new versions and give the opportunity to discuss open problems and their solutions with Patrick Gould, Software AG.
16:00 - 16:15	Closing Remarks -- Door Prizes

Meeting Location

The meeting will be located at:

Capital Group Companies
6455 Irvine Center Drive
Irvine, CA 92618
Phone (949) 975-6248

For a map on how to get to the facility, see Map to Facility

RSVP the Meeting

This RSVP link will be active as soon as the meeting is formalized.

Please click on the SAG link and fill out their form for registering. This will help us plan and adjust this meeting as well as help us with future planning.

Thanks for your support!!!

To RSVP the meeting and let us know you are coming, click here:

SAG Registration
Once on the page -
Click on "View Meeting Details and Register."
Then - Click on "Register Now"

To send a message to your user group president, please click on this link:

Send a Message to Your President

Please fill out the form when it appears. This will help us plan and adjust this meeting as well as help us with future planning. Thanks for your support!!!

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Contact Information

President:	Dieter Storr
Company:	Los Angeles Times
Email:	dieter.storr@latimes.com
Vice-President:	Richard Bartkus
Company:	BAX Global
Email:	rbartkus@baxglobal.com

Minutes from the PSW UG Meeting, Wednesday, April 18, 2007

President's Message
The meeting took place at the Chinese Cultural Center in Irvine ( South Coast Chinese Cultural Association, Irvine) and started at 8:00 a.m. with registration and continental breakfast, greetings and User Group business presented by Dieter Storr. He also presented Software AG updates because Jim McGarrity couldn't make it.
Dieter Storr explained the situation at LA Times (no longer customer but user) and that they probably will go away from SAG products in 2008. Nevertheless, the users re-elected him for another year and also elected as Vice-President Richard Bartkus from BAX Global.
>>View the presentation

ADABAS News
Becky Albin, Software AG, presented and discussed ADABAS version 8 for the mainframe, ADABAS version 5 for the open system, spanned records, new MU/PE length, LOBs, new ACBX, etc., new planned ADABAS 9 (?) functions, news from SAG R&D labs (both MF & OS) as well as the ADABAS Manager.
>>View the presentation

Basics on EAI, SOA, ESB, and MDA
Dieter Storr, LA Times, explained in this presentation the basics of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), and Module-Driven Architecture.
>>View the presentation

Natural Engineer – Refactoring
Tom Philpott, Generation Systems Ltd., explained how to refactoring by using Natural Engineer and to come from monolithic to service-oriented applications. To implement a service-oriented architecture, monolithic applications have to separate the business logic from the user input/output. Natural Engineer for Refactoring provides a set of tools that automates the tasks to prepare and split-off the business logic. This presentation will explain the principles and techniques of refactoring and the phases required for a refactoring project.
>>View the presentation

From Legacy to SOA -- Crossvision/SOA
This presentation from Shane McMillan, Software AG, was educational in nature and included a ‘how to’ approach along with a demo showing results. (products included are Adabas/Natural/Crossvision) Announce a ‘challenge’. Software AG would like our customers to challenge us to prove to them that we can help solve an IT challenge. E.g. reducing storage, improving batch, preventing a CPU upgrade etc. (all suggestions here are welcome).
>>View the presentation

Natural Strategie
By Patrick Gould, Software AG, introduced news from Natural 2006 and 2007 and gave an overview about future developments.
>>View the presentation

Closing Remarks, Door Prizes Twelve customers and users from six companies/civil service participated at this meeting. The conference ended around 4:30 p.m. with closing remarks and door prizes.

The planned meeting for November 30, 2006 has been postponed

Software AG and the President of the PSW User Group have agreed to postpone this meeting because of five registered users only (status: Nov 15, 2006).

The planned agenda:

Experiences with new ADABAS 8 functions

Jim Poole would like to discuss spanned records, new MU/PE length, LOBs, new ACBX, etc.

News from Software AG R&D labs (both Mainframe and Open Systems)

Becky Albin, Software AG, will report on what new features/functionality/enhancements are under consideration for Adabas on all operating system platforms. Your feedback is strongly encouraged, and any other ideas/input will be solicited. This feedback will go directly to the R&D groups, so don’t miss your chance to voice your opinion. Some of the topics to be discussed are: Dynamic parameters, encryption, security, archiving, and many others.

Experiences with NATURAL 2006 (NAT42)

By Steve Robinson, S.L. Robinson & Associates, Inc.

Roundtable

Discussions about ADABAS, Natural, and other products

Natural Developer Assessment Program

Receive your Natural Certification after a 60 minutes test
Whether you are new to Natural or have been programming in Natural for years, you owe it to yourself to analyze your current knowledge and determine those areas where you could benefit from additional training. Rest assured. Results of your assessment will be for your personal use - only.
The Natural Developer Assessment Program evaluates your knowledge of the Natural programming language including data types; data definitions; data access and manipulation; Natural maps; conditional processing; formatting and processing reports; and help maps and help routines.
Successful completion of the Assessment Program represents core knowledge of the Natural Programming Language, and is not dependent on a particular product version or platform. Technical competency is measured through a paper-based, multiple-choice exam that contains approximately 60 questions that must be completed within 60 minutes.
All results will be provided anonymous on SAG's Web site approximately one week after the meeting and can be obtained with your unique ID.

Benefits

Analysis of Natural programming language knowledge
Comprehensive evaluation of job-related qualifications as a Natural Developer
Opportunity to define and plan an individualized training program resulting in improved job satisfaction

Minutes From The PSW UG Conference, Thursday, April 6, 2006

The conference took place at Sheraton Cerritos Hotel at Towne Center and started at 8:00 a.m. with registration and continental breakfast, greetings and User Group business presented by Dieter Storr. Jim McGarrity, the new Account Executive for ETS/West, presented Software AG updates.
>>View the presentation

NATURAL Internals
Jim Bando, Software AG, presented Natural CICS and Com-plete Performance Tips, Natural 4.1 Buffer Storage, Natural Mainframe Internals ~ Selected Topics I, and Natural Buffer Pool ~ Performance Tips.
>>View the presentations

ADABAS Internals
Becky Albin, Chief IT Architect of Software AG, presented "A Technical Look at ADABAS 2006," which was based on ADABAS version 8.1 for mainframes. The presentation included lifting repeating field limits, lifting record limits, lifting extent limnits, new field formats, and enhanced direct call interface. Under simplified DB administration, Becky Albin discussed the ADABAS System Manager.
>>View the presentations

EntireX
Alex Burggraf, Advisory System Engineer of Software AG, did a presentation on "Using EntireX to Create and Consume Web Services." He gave a brief overview of Web Services in general and showed in practical examples and demos how to expose Natural programs as Web Services as well as how to call Web Services from Natural using EntireX Communicator.
>>View the presentations

Printing to Network Printers from Natural on the Mainframe
Ranga Nathan, BAX Global Inc., explained how to print from Natural on the mainframe directly to a network printer, for example a pdf-file on his laptop. Using cups (http://cups.org) and TCP/IP sockets low-level interface, one can deliver print streams across network to a Linux server running cups software. "cups" manages network printers and can have access to all windows printers through Samba (http://samba.org) file/printer sharing software.
>>View the presentations

Round Table Discussion
Dieter Storr presented different problems from ADABAS, Natural, and Predict and discussed it with Becky Albin, Jim Bando, and the user group members.
>>View the round table discussion
We also discussed and voted the following C/Es: EP# 4295, 4116, 4084, 4067, 3988, 4307, 4256, 4223, 4292, 4322.
>>View the C/E presentation.
>>View the C/E voting results.
In addition to the existing C/Es, the members agreed that all ADABAS parameters should be modifiable when the nucleus is up and running. Most of the companies don't use a region limitation, for example REGION=0.

Eclipse, Natclipse, Natural Parser
Arne Gerhard and Thorsten Bernecker from innoWake GmbH Germany, both Software AG partners, discussed a different and more efficient way how Natural can be used in an Eclipse environment. As many legacy applications need to be moved to the Web or modernized, developers require one single development environment. They don't want to switch between different IDEs and have to learn different tools just because they're switching from Natural to a different programming language. Managers understand that the same methods can be employed to achieve a higher level of quality and more efficient code development. For a demo please click on DEMO
innoWake introduced also the world's first complete syntax tree parser for Natural code. The Natural Parser generates an abstract representation of your code - allowing you to both analyze code and in turn to modify it in a truly automated fashion.
>>View the presentations

Closing Remarks, Door Prizes
Regarding the relatively small number of attendees, no parallel or break out sessions will be held at future meetings. Two rooms and the equipment are too costly for less than 30 attendees, for example. Our Pacific Southwestern Usergroup still has 113 registered members. In 2001, more than 50 members participated in our meetings. On our April 6th meeting, we just had twenty-two attendees, inclusively five presenters from SAG and the German company. The PSW UG will discuss with SAG and other Usergroup presidents how to attract more registered members for future meetings, for example training days, Webinars, etc.
The conference ended around 4:30 p.m. with closing remarks and door prizes.

Minutes From The PSW UG Conference, Tuesday, October 11, 2005

The conference took place at Sheraton Cerritos Hotel at Towne Center and started at 8:00 a.m. with registration and continental breakfast, greetings, User Group business, and Software AG updates presented by Dieter Storr.
>>View the presentation

Coming attractions from Software AG -- Sneak Previews -- DVD
The fan-tastic film followers, show biz buffs and professional movie critics Paul Mercier as Cydro Pompano and Dieter Storr as Cyril Pompano introduced an exhilarating premier - charting the course with project Augusta, Natural 2006: Natural and the Eclipse IDE, Natural Business Services, and Rich Web Applications.
They continued with the Legacy Modernization -- ApplinX -- a film about the power of love...and the power in business-critical systems by extending them to the Web, composite applications and Service Oriented Architecture to drive the organizations into the future.
No limits with ADABAS 2006, the ADABAS Manager, and ADABAS SOA Gateway let the audience literally jumped out of their seats when they saw how they could open and extend their ADABAS systems and increase productivity of their systems and their IT staff to support new business initiatives.
>>View an abstract of the presentation from Boston
>>View the ADABAS script
>>View the NATURAL script
>>View the Legacy Modernization script
>>Picture of Cydro and Cyril Pompano

The next ADABAS - vision and future
Becky Albin, Database Architect, Software AG, explained that ADABAS V8.1 will be arriving in several months! V8 will have many new and exciting new features, such as: Large Objects, unlimited record sizes, increase in the maximum number of occurrences for MU/PE fields, increased number of physical and logical extents, and lots more. And what if you found out that Adabas on the mainframe could be installed from a CD??? Many of the same features for Adabas v8 on the mainframe will be available with Adabas V5.1, along with non-descriptor searches, Unicode support, Long Alpha fields, lots of utility changes and other enhancements. Along with the new releases of Adabas, the Adabas Manager will be released. The Adabas Manager is a web browser based version of the old standby Adabas Online Services. Get a look at this new interface for the administration of Adabas. And find out how it can run in an IBM Tivoli or CA’s Unicenter environment.
>>View the presentation

NATURAL System Utilities
Darrell Davenport from Washington State University discussed the power of the terminal commands (A.K.A. "SET CONTROL" or "%" commands). And they are not limited to online (terminal controlled) sessions! Surprisingly, you can do with these little-known and seldom used control commands a lot. Also the session covered many Natural commands, for example the secret powers of LIST and some new system variables like *HOST and *CPU-TIME. He also included the 'SYS' utilities.
>>View the presentation

ADABAS Tips, Guts, Performance -- for DBAs
Working at a large volume shop with over 40 production databases, small changes make big differences. Jim Poole's presentation was a fast-paced session covering a wide range of topics for DBA's trying to make a difference. The primary emphasis was on performance tips and techniques, backed by both lab studies as well as the real world application of these tips. Also, he discussed various ideas, which make the DBA's life easier.
>>View the presentation

Debugging Natural Applications
By Darrell Davenport, Washington State University, reported about three distinct types of problems that they encountered in their applications; compile time errors, runtime errors, and logic errors. For each of these types, there are various methods to discover the cause. Several factors must be considered before selecting which method to employ, for example online or batch; CICS or TSO or COM-PLETE? Also, personal preference plays a role in the selection.
>>View the presentation

ADABAS and Natural under Linux
Ranga Nathan, BAX Global, received his free trial copy of Linux very late from Software AG, so he reported about the following themes only:

What are the pre-requisites?

What distributions are supported?

How does the install work?

How to verify installation?

How to configure the environment?

Examples – Natural and ADABAS utilities

What are the gotchas?

Best practices

How different from mainframe?

A sneak preview
>>View the presentation

Natural 'Business Services' / Refactoring (SOA)
Tom Philpott, the Solutions Architect of Software AG pointed out that in the past, traditional applications have been built with database logic, business logic and end-user interaction all mixed together within the same programs. The refactoring approach provides an automated solution whereby such programs can be split into separate components for use within a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
>>Presentation is not available

Round table discussion
With Jim Poole, Darrell Davenport, Tom Philpott, Becky Albin, and Dieter Storr
We discussed themes from Boston
>>View the roundtable themes from Boston
>>View the presentation about Natclipse
>>View the discussion about Natural and animated programming
Remarks: The White Paper was created by Dieter Storr after the conference
>>View the C/E selection list
Remarks: We didn't discuss the list because it would be too time consuming. We decided to select 5 Adabas and 5 Natural C/Es and send it with our evalutation to dieter.storr@latimes.com.
Darrell Davenports Natural discussion list (not used)
We also discussed with Ralph Baham, SAG, the lack of SAG presence in Southern California. When we learned how to spell a name, for example Kaegli and Falkinburg, the Accountant Executives left SAG.

End
The conference ended around 4:30 p.m. wth closing remarks and door prizes.

Minutes From The PSW UG Conference, Tuesday, March 8, 2005

Software AG Update
Ralph Baham, Software AG, informed us about news around SAG, such as .NET and Nautural; new product ApplinX; new employees from SAP; ETS strategy; XML business integration; Fujitsu and the strategic alliance; certification for SUSE Linux enterprise server; partnership with Novell (Unix).
Presentation is not available

A Sneak Peek at ADABAS Version 8
ADABAS version 8 is scheduled for release later this year and Becky Albin covered the anticipated new features and enhancements.
Presentation is not available

Natural Version 4 and 6
Steve Robinson, S.L.R. & Associates, Inc., gave a presentation about new Natural functions, which are avaiable on version 6 already; not yet on the mainframe 4. But, they will be there soon -- for compatibility reasons.
He also discussed in a second session xtensible arrays, long variables, dynamic sized variables, etc. basically anything having to do with new programming features and 4 and 6. There are other new functions like *TRIM, etc.
Presentations are not available

ADABAS Replication Server
The ADABAS Replication Server propagates ADABAS changes (adds/updates/deletes) in REAL TIME out to various targets. These targets could be ADABAS, Oracle, DB2, etc. The ADABAS Replication Server can be used for Disaster Recovery, Data Warehouse population, and other scenarios.
Becky Albin continuated and enhanceed last October's presentation, as requested by many UG members.
Presentation is not available

Roundtable Discussion Becky Albin, Steve Robinson, and Dieter Storr discussed themes from ADABAS, Natural and other products

ApplinX
Software AG explained their new ApplinX technology that will help companies save time and costs in creating Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) by turning COBOL/3GL applications into Web services without the need to write new code.
ApplinX Emulation: Thin client web application in ASP, JSP, or .NET. Presented to the user with the look and feel of an emulation tool.
ApplinX Web Enhancement ASP, JSP, or .NET: Apply any style or theme to a web appliation, provide instant web access of host application, customize a web page to a better look, create new workflow without making any changes on the host. Combine host screens to a single page, port the information to other application.
Web Service: Simply by pointing-and-clicking, create a web service that can connect to legacy applications, which will update and/or receive information from the host application.
Presentation is not available

Backup Methods for a Hot Site
Dieter Storr explained and discussed backup methods for a hot site. More to be read on his Web site.
>>View the description of the presentation

End
The conference ended around 4:30 p.m. wth closing remarks and door prizes.

Minutes From The PSW UG Conference, Thursday, October 7, 2004

The user group members elected Dieter Storr for another year for their president.

Mainframe Modernization -- Optimize, Extend, Manage

By walking you through a modernization process, Tom Philpott, SAG, demonstrated how you can optimize & enhance your development environment. He showed how to take a time tested mainframe application and expose it to new technologies, applications and other internal business applications, as well as your external business partners. He also showed you how to extend your mainframe applications by leveraging open standards such as XML & Web Services, allowing these applications to participate in a Service Oriented Architecture.

Create, Deploy and Use Web Services
- Create a Web Service from Natural and make it available to other applications
- Consume external Web Services from a Natural application
Wrap business functions to extend applications
- Wrap a Natural application as .NET objects, to be used by VB and ASP
- Wrap a Natural application as Java objects to be used by JSP and other Java Applications
Integrate Microsoft Office and Natural
- Populating Word documents with data stored within Adabas
- Send e-mails from your Natural applications to your customers
Expose Adabas data to the end-user for reporting purposes
- Excel
- Crystal Reports

Discussion

We discussed at lunch SAG directions, the new changes and enhancement (C/E) process, the Natural Conference 2005, and Software AG responded to customers' questions.

Distributing ADABAS for Improved Performance and Availability

Becky Albin, SAG, gave us a technical view of how to install and implement the new clustering capabilities of ADABAS version 7.4. ADABAS Parallel Services allows multiple update nuclei against a single physical database operating in a single OS/390 or VSE image. ADABAS Cluster Services allows multiple update nuclei against a single phyusical database in an IBM Parllel Sysplex environment crossing multiple OS/390 images. Topics also include performance, tuning, recovery and 24x7 capabilities and a comparison of the two clustering options.
>>View the presentation

The Future of Natural, Version 4.1, 6.1, and beyond

Tom Philpott's presentation was based on Andreas Schütz's presentation, which was hold at the Natural Conference 2004 in Boston. The PPS document is not available.
>>View a similar presentation

ADABAS Replication Solution

Becky Albin, SAG, continued with the presentation about ADABAS and the replication. The ADABAS Replication Solution is a framework for ortganizations that need ADABAS data changes/modifications delivered to a target application while minimally impacting the normal processing of ADABAS. This presentation will cover the concepts, definition, and process flow of the ADABAS Replication Solution, Software AG.
Becky also will give an overview about "The New ADABAS SQL Gateway SQL Access to ADABAS On Any Plattform.
>>View the presentation

A User Perspective of Natural 4

Jim Wisdom, Boston University, pointed out some gotchas in the new version and explained the "Top Ten" new statements, which were evaluated by Jim's colleagues from BU. He also described the functions of "Multifetch." His presentation (PPS) is not available.

Performance and Tuning for UNIX

Bruce Beaman, ETS Business Line, SAG, described the supported ADABAS versions for Open Systems, pointed out key things to remember, and explained tuning issues for Open Systems. He then described ADABAS SQL Gateway, ADABAS Replication Solution, ADABAS 5 for Open Systems, and ADABAS Replication Server. His presentation (PPS) is not available.

How to Test Your Web Applications in a Mainframe and Open System Network

Dieter Storr's presentation explained what parts play which role in the network, what response time should be expected, as well as differences between various test scenarios. It also described the different tools available to measure and analyze the network components and how to carry out stress tests without manual keystrokes.
>>View the description and the presentation

Natural Productivity Package

The conference ended around 4:30 p.m. wth closing remarks, door prizes, and SAG distributed to all participants CDs with a Personal Edition of Natural Version 6.
>>You can also reply online for the CD

Minutes From The Training Day, Thursday, March 4, 2004

As requested by many User Group members, the last meeting was a Training Day with two parallel sessions, which took place at Pacific Palms, Conference Resort.

It started at 8:00 a.m with registration and continental breakfast, greetings, User Group business, and Software AG updates.

Training Track I
An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming, Visual Basic and Java for Mainframe Programmers by MindCross
In such a rapidly changing field as OOP, it is essential to not only keep up but to lead the way. This presentation will cover the basic concepts of object-oriented programming and the elements of object-oriented design, including objects, classes, and methods. It will introduce both Visual Basic and Java and demonstrate the basics of these programming languages.

Training Track II
EntireX Wrappers and Web-enablement, Natural and EntireX Integration with RDBMS by MindCross

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