Customer

Our client was a global provider of ERP, CRM, and SCM software solutions to mid-market companies.

Technologies

Databases: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008.
Programming languages and platforms: Progress 4GL, Microsoft C# .NET, LINQ.

Challenge

The customer's main product which drove significant revenues was an ERP, manufacturing, and financials application suite. The product was written using development tools provided by Progress Software some years ago. The customer's application was re-written three years ago on .NET framework.

The server application code was written with the help of Progress Application Business Code (ABL/4GL). There were about two million lines of code stored in five thousand and a half files.

The company was looking for an automated solution to convert the product Progress 4GL code to C#. It’s worth mentioning here that the product was not an internal application, but a commercial enterprise solution. It was thus necessary to develop solutions for migration of strategic customers along with possible customization, product support, and multiple product releases within the given period of time, which was another challenge altogether.

Solution

In order to execute a successful application conversion, our team offered Ispirer Toolkit that could automate conversion of Progress 4GL files to C# .NET 3.5. We implemented that migration tool to meet the customer's specific requirements for software coding guidelines and use of specific .NETAPIs.

Results and Advantages

The migrated application widely utilized database access logic and tool with the latest features of .NET 3.5 for conversion – LINQ technology. LINQ was an extension to .NET Framework, which enhanced C# with native language syntax for SQL queries and provided various class libraries to take advantages of those capabilities.

September, 2009