Using TurnOver PDQ^™ with TurnOver^™

TurnOver PDQ is a database change time machine. By marrying the strengths of Lakeview's MIMIX/PromoterT with powerful features developed at SoftLanding Systems, we offer you a unique product that allows you to revise several files simultaneously with minimal interruption in service. This product comes with a powerful utility program — the Conversion Program Wizard—that allows you to create conversion programs for each file quickly and easily.

These programs are used during "copy active file" processing to convert your data. Run TurnOver PDQ alone to copy or convert active files, or with TurnOver Change Management in a fully integrated mode. When used with TurnOver, TurnOver PDQ ensures that changes to files and related objects go in quickly and simultaneously, with minimum downtime—even with several huge multi-million record files!

This information piece describes how to set up TurnOver and TurnOver PDQ to work together. And it describes how the change process works. If you follow these recommendations, you will be able to stage a full dress rehearsal of your changes — before you go live.

Setting up TurnOver

The schematic above depicts the setup recommended to make use of TurnOver PDQ within the framework of TurnOver. The Production stage and Production environments (Levels 3 and 4) must be set up in strict accordance with our recommendations in order for the TurnOver PDQ functions to work properly.

This recommended setup uses staging environments to compile objects prior to moving them to production. A form is run to promote the objects into the staging library and then another form is run to promote them to production. During this second promotion, data is copied from the target level into the staging environment prior to moving the objects into the next level. This is different than normal promotions where data is copied from the old file in a TurnOver archive library into the new file during the promotion.

Here's a closer look at how the process works—referring to Level 1 and 2 of the diagram above:

On your Worklist, you check out a file and related objects to be changed.
Make changes to files and other objects on your Worklist.
If the change requires the use of a conversion program, use the TGENCNVPGM (Generate Conversion Program) command to generate a conversion program.
Promote the files and objects to QA Stage. (Note that there are no files there when the promotion begins. The files will be created there. Later on, during the promotion to QA, the files will be populated with data and then moved to QA. Source is copied and programs and other objects are compiled at this level.)
Once the Level 1 promotion runs, it can be copied to Level 2 and run.
During the run of the Level 2 promotion, the data in the old file at Level 2 is copied to the one at Level 1. While the file is being copied (and any number of files can be promoted at a time), users can still be logged on and updating the file. (For the sake of performance and efficiency, we recommend against running any other massive updates to the files during the promotion job.) Data is converted during this copy process by calling the conversion programs you generated earlier, in step 3. During the copy process, all file updates are being journaled. If you have very large files, this copy step may take a fairly long time. Journaled file changes are being converted as the data is being copied from the old file to the new one.
Once all the data in the files you promoted has been copied, TurnOver acquires exclusive locks on the files. Messages are sent to prompt you to get your users to log off. PDQ will wait until this has been done. Only at this point are your users required to be out of the application.
TurnOver now moves the old file into its archive library (as it would during a normal TurnOver promotion) and moves the new files along with all of the related objects into the target libraries.
Once this promotion step is complete, your users can log on to your application again. Because TurnOver only needs to allocate the files for the time it takes to move the objects, your users need to be out of the application only for a very short time—usually for only a few minutes.
The process for promotion into Level 3 (Prod Stage) and Level 4 (Production) is exactly the same as for Level 1 and 2. (Look upon the promotion into Level 1 and 2 as a dress rehearsal for the real thing.)

A few additional setup items to consider:

The source files and libraries for Level 1 and 2 should be the same names. This eliminates the need for TurnOver to copy source and archive old source during the final promotion to QA or Production. Level 3 and 4 should also have the same source files and libraries.
Create parameters and object authority should be set in the staging areas just as they should be in production—objects are being moved from staging to production and you don't want to waste any time having TurnOver resetting these parameters during the final promotion. (Use the 'S' value for the Create Parms and Authority parameters for Levels 2 and 4.)

Restrictions

SoftLanding has tested and certified the recommended approach defined here — contact SoftLanding to discuss alternative approaches (except that you can have any number of staging and target levels). SoftLanding warrants only those approaches it has tested and approved in advance.

Remote Production Systems

On a production system, the TurnOver Receive-library is the staging library—you do not need to insert an additional staging level on remote systems. However, you must use the promotion method of Move Object (MO).

TurnOver PDQ is licensed separately and is not included with the TurnOver product. TurnOver PDQ must be licensed for each system (that is, development and production systems) on which it is to be run.

Interface & Application Software Support

You can use TurnOver's many APIs or built-in interfaces to bridge to any software package, including:

Built-In Interfaces	Application Support	Optional Interfaces*
Abstract^™	ASI^™	AllFusion 2E^®
AllFusion Plex^™	BPCS^®/ERPLX	AS/SET^®
Code/400^™	PRMS^™	Dimensions^™
Deploy/400^™	PKMS	LANSA^™/Visual LANSA
JD Edwards World^®	HFA^™/Friedman	ProGen Plus^™
Lawson	Infinium^™	Subversion for OS/400
PathFinder	JBA^™	*Optional interfaces licensed separately from TurnOver.
TestBench^™	JDA^™
TurnOver PDQ^™	JHA^™
Version Manager^™	MAPICS
WebSmart^™	Island Pacific
	Kronos
	Movex
	Premenos