Greetings,
Broward College is migrating its Natural / ADABAS applications into Work Day service, which will take a couple more years, after which our ADABAS system will be a historical system, and we are looking to retire the Linux systems they live on.
We would preferably like to move the system from Linux to Windows … has anyone ported their Linux applications and database to Windows ?
Looking for some data on relative effort required, any gotchas, or if you’ve got a ‘How To’ document on the procedure, would love to peruse.
Thanks in advance for any help that is provided !
Regards,
Luis Diaz
Business Application Manager - Databases and Interfaces
Broward College
Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
As with any platform-to-platform port, script conversion will require the biggest effort.
If you’re on a recent version of Natural, you can move the application and execute it immediately; there is no need to re-catalog.
If you’re on a recent version of Adabas, you can take an ADABCK DUMP on the Unix box and ADABCK RESTORE on the Windows box.
With a bit of effort getting over the learning curve, developers will be much more productive with the Natural Studio IDE versus the “green screen” editor in Natural for Unix. (Natural ONE’s learning curve is much, much steeper.)
A big “gotcha” might be the Natural Output Window under Natural for Windows. This is the default user interface. Under Unix, you use third-party terminal emulation software to execute your applications. (Terminal emulation is identical to that seen on a mainframe.) In many ways the Natural Output Window doesn’t look, act, or feel like terminal emulation. Many applications base their navigation on PF-key sensitivity. That is, on a screen of detail lines, a specific line is selected by placing the cursor on it, and a new function is selected by PF-key. PF-key sensitivity is not supported under Natural for Windows. Because the cursor cannot be placed on an output field, this also means that help routines are not accessible for them.
If your application is based on PF-key sensitivity, it won’t work properly under Natural for Windows with the Natural Output Window.
The good news is that, with a bit of effort, you can run your application in a browser. This is not identical to terminal emulation either, but it’s probably close enough to satisfy your users.
Good luck with your port.