Change management is the arduous task of ensuring standard procedures are used during any change made to a business's IT infrastructure, and simultaneously lowering the chance of hitting bugs or snags along the way. However, the bigger the company (and the more machines, environments, and developers the company has), the more complicated change management becomes. In spite of this, many businesses have avoided getting any type of change-management software to help them along, and the complex task of controlling and tracking software changes is placed on their developers, who already have a ton of work to do. Without a change-management solution, each developer acts as a sort of franchisee who is solely responsible for daily operations and changes within the life cycle of his or her software components. On top of the amount of work that a developer must do to keep up with company-wide changes, such as a franchise, the many segregated implementations can lead to inconsistencies throughout business applications.

However, there is a way to obtain more uniformity and better adaptation across multiple platforms. ARCAD-Skipper works like a company-owned chain in that it unites and automates updates, changes, and other daily tasks throughout the company rather than depending on each developer (or franchisee).

Controlling Software Change

ARCAD-Skipper (see Figure 1) is a software suite that manages complexities ranging from small-scale, everyday changes to large-scale changes. It provides for change control on multiple platforms (including Unix, Linux, and Windows), all from within your System i environment. You even have the option to complete a change within WDSc or remain in the 5250 environment. Skipper works with diverse platforms to provide consistency throughout your company. This is difficult, if not impossible, to secure unless developers are working under a unified process that lets them deploy all components of an application together consistently and reliably.

Skipper also provides comprehensive impact analysis by parsing through application code and logging program interactions and dependencies. That way, a developer knows which other source and objects may be affected by his or her changes so that these adjustments can also be considered during the change process.

With version control, check-out capabilities, the ability to support multiple testing environments, and automatic multi-platform version integrity checking, Skipper makes necessary software changes a little easier to manage and ensures that when a change is sent to production it is fully functional. If by chance an error does fall through the cracks, the ARCAD-Open Repository keeps a comprehensive history of source code versions. This lets you view, consult, and even restore a previous version of an application. In addition, log files are kept for all versions, components, actions, and messages, helping you see who has done what and when it was done — an important benefit for companies who need to comply with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

Integration Made Easy

If your company customizes third-party software, Skipper's ARCAD-Integrater solution can integrate your modifications with a new version of the third-party package. This module analyzes the impact of the new version on your entire application. Along with this analysis, the ARCAD-Changer solution can help you modify elements that are affected by the integration. This helps you ensure that new components are consistent with currently running software and avoid bugs throughout the system that could be caused by changes in these third-party software packages.

Tedious Changes Made Simple

The Changer module is a big part of the Skipper suite. It lets developers automate many manual software development tasks. With ARCAD-Changer, a business can define and customize work environments that are used to organize and automate development. These environments help developers with routine and tedious tasks such as making sure everything recompiles correctly. ARCAD-Changer also validates all versions, making sure coding changes do not interfere with each other.

Delivering to the Chain

ARCAD-Deliver is the final step in releasing changes into your production environment. It has the ability to handle any possible transfer type (such as PTF or free form) and all modes of transfer (such as TCP/IP or SNADS network). Businesses can customize how changes are delivered and installed on their production machines. The Deliver module also keeps log files for changes, and its automatic rollback function can be used if a problem occurs during deployment and installation. With Skipper, distributing to production machines is fully automated. This helps avoid inconsistencies in the IT environment.

Unifying Change

ARCAD-Skipper can unify all of a company's development teams through its multi-platform support. Not only does it automate many daily maintenance tasks, but it also retains information about changes that will help everyone stay on the same page. The ARCAD-Open Repository, which integrates tightly with Skipper, holds a complete history of every application change, starting with the initial request and continuing to the actual revised line of code. With this capability, fixing bugs becomes much less complicated, and all programmers can see what has been done and by whom. Furthermore, the changes will always be sent across the network simultaneously, preventing any platforms or systems from being behind a version.

Cassandra Deemer is an editorial assistant for System iNEWS.

Solution Spotlight is a feature of System iNews that provides more in-depth coverage of significant System i products. Offerings are selected for Solution Spotlight by System iNews editorial staff, based on staff perception of the product as either new or innfebative, or because the product is the subject of extensive discussions in Internet forums on SystemiNetwork.com and elsewhere.

ARCAD Software Inc.

800-676-4709

arcadsoftware.com

Requirements: V5R1 or later; native or graphical interface on PC (Windows 2000, XP - Connection via TCP/IP)