Financial Services
Nature of Project
Proof-of-Concept
VMS Basic to C/C++ RMS to Oracle
VT220 to GUI AlphaVMS to UNIX
This company is a leading financial partner in the Nordic countries with a strong European presence and international scope. They constitute a natural collaborating party for both private individuals and companies, for everything from simplifying everyday finances to advice on complicated corporate deals. The application was a full banking system for the corporate banking segment. It was installed at 10 sites around the world, each with different needs. It was impossible to replace it with standard packages due to specific functionality and product support in some modules, primarily DDA and payments.
At the time of the proof of concept, the client company 's wholesale banking application was 13 years old. It had recently been moved from VAX/VMS to Alpha/VMS. It contained several million lines of code in VAX BASIC with some MACRO. The screen handlers were FMS FDC and SMG with an RMS file system. There was difficulty finding quality staff and the time to market was very long. Because of the RMS file system, reporting tools could not be used. The screen handlers were outdated and text based, even to VT220 standards. The system was clearly in need of renovation so that another lifecycle could be gained from the application. The goal was to prove that, (1) the operating system could move from Alpha/VMS to UNIX, (2) the screen handlers could go from VT220 to GUI, (3) the file system could move from RMS to Oracle, and (4) that the language could go from VAX BASIC to C/ C++.
A subset of approximately 30,000 lines of code from the DDA module was used in the proof-of concept. This portion was selected because it contained the oldest code and it used FDC screen handler. The BASIC code was transpiled into C. Because of string handling, it was decided that C++ would be used in the full-scale solution. The proof-of-concept was concluded in three months and was considered a total success because all four conceptual questions were proven.
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