Why Migrate?

Future of the Organization:
Few of us realized twenty, even thirty years ago that code we wrote then would still be in use today. The unfortunate part about code written 20 years ago is that our skills have improved, our understanding has grown and the technology underlying the environment has made dramatic steps forward. How does one keep up with change?

Growing the business - modifying the code:

• Manually written code is time consuming to modify - we often forget the conventions that were used.
• It is often difficult to determine what should be changed when multiple programmers made multiple changes on a piece of code that may barely resemble the original instruction set.
• Handwritten code is costly to modify. Adding fields, enhancing validations, updating multiple files often require "stretching" the capabilities of the code or force modifications to the design engine.
• Is it more effective to continually modify a homegrown toolset, or is it better to spend that time enhancing the applications that generate revenue for the business?

Reasons for migration to Nucleus:

• Modern look-and-feel with Nucleus that is familiar to Windows users. Training is simplified.
• Few development sites have the expertise, the patience, dedication and perseverance to maintain and continue to enhance a toolset.
• Reduce maintenance costs - A rich set of standardized utilities drastically reduces the time it takes to modify or enhance the capabilities of a program or screen
• Source code management - Security of your code set, and the effective and efficient documentation of changes made is essential to many regulated businesses.
• Release library management
• Empowering the user (often with only minimal training), to accomplish tasks that formerly required the attention of a programmer/analyst. This can be done while maintaining data security.
• Enhancing the capabilities of the existing environment - Pop-ups, drill-downs, validations, lookups and more can be quickly added and easily supported
• Improved consistency of applications reduces help-desk support calls
• Security - can be enabled on a user by user basis
• Security - inherent down to the field level, including the ability to hide fields, disable fields, hide or enable pages of a screen, protect / nochange fields, jumps and more
• Security - file access, verb, command, screen, menu, code, field, etc.
• Forms management - Design and print laser forms using Nucleus tools and plain white paper.
• Reporting
• Data export and import capabilities using NuQL
• Technology partnership - partner with acknowledged leaders in Modernizing Multi-Value applications

Bottom line:
Does it remain practical for an organization whose strength lies in a vertical application and in the knowledge of a market, to continue to support an internally developed set of tools? Considerations include:

• What happens when the key developer of the toolset wishes to retire?
• Is there a core group of programmers able to support the toolset?
• Is there a core group of programmers able to effectively use all the features of the toolset?
• Is there a core group of individuals who can enhance the documentation? Nucleus offers almost 500 pages of supporting documentation
• Is there a future for the existing toolset?
• Is there a future for the product that makes the money, after the key developer retires?
• Will new connectivity be required due to new banking regulations, governmental restrictions or mandates, etc.?
• What happens when a future need arises to add toolset functionality?
• Does a need ever go away, if functionality can't be added in the required timeframe?
• Where is the expertise of the organization - In the application or the toolset?
• What is perceived as limitations of the current toolset?
• Who is keeping up with new technology? How much time is spent in doing that?

Empowering the business:
With the Nucleus full screen editor, intelligent stacker, source code management, functions library and extensive utilities libraries, a programmer can increase productivity by 500% or more. To add to that, the time spent debugging code is greatly reduced. Of significant interest to management, is that the reliability of information is often increased and the time spent tracking down data errors by senior level management, programmers and end users is greatly reduced

Empowering the users:
Concentrating the system development resources toward enhancing the applications that run the business, generating the revenue and driving the sales, "makes money" for the business.

Long term support and maintenance effort is minimized (therefore less costly) due to the easily managed and quickly addressed structure that Nucleus offers. Numerous debugging tools speed the deployment of applications.

Training time for new users is often greatly reduced. Greater operational consistency and the ability to utilize skills garnered outside of the organization reduce the end-users reliance on internal help desk personnel.

Web applications- expanding the scope and the reach:
Browser based applications can be designed using "rule-sets" defined in Nucleus screens, reducing the code that must be maintained and the cost of maintaining it. A single code-set can support web applications as well as GUI, character based and even green screen applications. Nucleus StarSite offers centralized management of web components in a host based development environment.

Other benefits:

• Integrated corporate messaging (outside of email)
• Integrated email (even on dumb terminals)
• Fully integrated help, easily added validations
• Simplicity of adding search routines and "drill-downs"
• GUI can help decision makers buy because of a "perceived need for GUI" in the marketplace
• Future programming effort can go into enhancing the applications that make money for the company
• Ability to provide client specific applications without having to build "special" applications, as a benefit of the Nucleus function library.
• Platform independence. Nucleus applications can be quickly and easily moved from one multi-dimensional platform to another with usually only a re-compile and re-licensing.
• Development tools, debugging utilities and deployment systems in the Nucleus environment speed application delivery.
• Secure Inquiry capabilities for the end-user, greatly extending the security of the Pick model
• Nucleus allows Pick code to be written in an event-driven manner.
• The approach of Nucleus is NOT top-down but fully event-driven.
• Nucleus uses standard Pick programming convention and syntax. Programmers can be proficient with Nucleus in 3 days and achieve expert status in 3 months.
• Existing applications written in System Builder or other development environments can be transformed and empowered for the future with Nucleus, capitalizing on your existing application investment.

Migration to Nucleus: Technical procedures and issues