Our company will shortly begin the conversion of our ADABAS/NATURAL Applications from the Mainframe to the LUW World. Our servers are currently being installed and tested and some of the products that were purchased have been delegated to a select few. I am one of those few.
I’ve been tasked with learning the ins and outs of Natural Engineer. I believe we have the latest version (8.3) ? I have access to the following documents:
Natural Engineer 833 Release Notes
Natural Engineer Concepts and Facilities
Natural Engineer Messages and Codes
Natural Engineer Reporting
Natural Engineer 8331 readmefix
My background has strictly been in Application Development for the last 20+ years, not installation or configuation of software or packages. I’m looking for some type of user guide or recommendation on how to get started in this new environment with this software. Each of the documents appear to have been written to work for any platform. I’m looking for examples of how to get started ( Go here, click here, do this, etc…) for the LUW world if it exists.
This GUI environment is completely new to me and my team. We’re strictly Mainframe ADABAS/NATURAL. Links or suggestions for Rookies like myself on how to get started using this software will be greatly appreciated. I’ve even consulted YouTube for help and actually found a 1 hr demo on some of the basics but even that has left me somewhat puzzled.
Would appreciate any help, links, or documentation that anybody has used in the past that is still relevant for me to use as a starting point in this journey.
Thanks !
Tadd Yarbrough
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
AVX Corporation
Have you had any response to this?
Natural Engineer is a great product if you know what you want up front.
After deciding where the repository resides, installation, loads and pre-analysis, it will get you a view into a whole system, a sub-system, files, fields, etc.
It is a very creative product but you need to understand what it can do and then make your analysis decisions.
Also there are some stuff you don’t need, but that’s with all products.
MW
Mike, “No”. I haven’t had any responses since my original posting back in February.
Concerns me a bit about the usefulness of the product. Currently I have a stand alone version of Engineer running on a Laptop. All of our Mainframe data has been dumped into it so I can play around. It appears though that what few tools and tips I can find on the Internet about Engineer are geared towards a complete install in an LUW environment. Without this, a lot of the features and options appear to be disabled.
This is where my frustration comes from when trying to learn something new. When things don’t work as documented, I keep trying to figure out what it is I’m doing wrong when that actual problem exists with the way it has been installed in order to be demoed.
I like the ease with which some of the reports can be generated but we have an in house written tool that I still have to run against what Natural Engineer produces just for peace of mind.
Any suggestions for documentation geared towards Developers instead of Systems Guys would be greatly appreciated. I think my Manager is leaning on me somewhat to figure Engineer out so that I can help the rest of our team be as productive with it as possible with it whenever this conversion is complete.
I’ve asked a local SAG representative to contact you to help further - let me know if you don’t hear from them soon.
You don’t say what you have installed in the laptop - but you would need Adabas, Natural & Natural Engineer running under Windows.
If you could clarify what you have installed & also what you are trying to understand whilst using Natural Engineer, then I might be able to point you in the right direction.
Brian, thanks for responding.
The laptop does have Adabas and Natural installed along with Engineer. However, it is completely stand alone and not connected to any active server at this time. That’s the reason I fear the tips and techniques I’m finding on the internet are not useful. Most of the options that I attempt to try and/or test are “greyed out” and not active.
What I was hoping for was some type of beginners guide that leaned more towards developers and how they would benefit from Engineer rather than a document for System’s Programmers. I think the software has potential if properly used but what little bit of testing I’ve accomplished I’m not comfortable that my results are accurate.
Can you make a suggestion about a SAG or Non-SAG document as a good reference point for Engineer beginners ?
Thanks,
Tadd