Mainframe migration from z/OS-BD2 to Unix-Oracle
Background
GENERALI, the third largest insurance company in the world – behind Allianz and Axa – is committed to a policy of reducing the costs of its Information System. The decision was made to migrate the SiPo application (non-automobile property and casualty insurance) from a Mainframe z / OS-BD2 environment to a Unix-Oracle environment.
Description of the solution
The Project was based on the development of a suite of tools dedicated to it. And if necessary, they could be tailor-made to the particularities of the source and the target. The work focused on:
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the transfer of the data model in Oracle,
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data recovery (significant volume: 12.5 billion records including 1.7 billion historical lines migrated in advance and 17.8 billion lines migrated on the changeover weekend, i.e. around 850 Gb with inter-site transfers)
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the creation of an Easytrieve to Cobol converter,
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the design and implementation of a Cobol code converter (SQL order and adaptation of the management of return codes)
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and also the creation of a shell / SQL script converter.
SiPo was still using features from GSAM files. It was therefore necessary to port the mechanism to Unix. For this, Move Solutions has developed a GSAM accessor to replace this functionality that does not exist on Unix.
Means used (and duration)
The transformation project was carried out over 2 years, with a Move Solutions project team which was able to exceed ten people at peak.
International environment: France / Italy.
The non regression tests were carried out by CAP GEMINI Italy. This experienced team also provided technical and functional expertise on the SiPo application.
Results reached
GENERALI was able to reduce its license costs on the mainframe. Indeed, it was able to lower the power necessary to ensure its production remaining on Mainframe.
On the other hand, the DL1 licenses have not been renewed (IMS / DB specifically).
SiPo was the last application to use DL1 functionalities and in particular GSAM. There were also configuration tables which were ported to DB2 by the teams from CAP GEMINI, our partner, during the time of the project.