Coexistence between XE and 9.2

[fauberte]

Hi!

We have a very odd situation. We have a site where they have 40000 customs in XE, a billion dollar company that need to revise all their business processes. This is a major plan for many years that will by done by phases (financial, inventory, etc...). We will need to be coexistent with the data for many years. Upgrade has been rules out and it's a new vanilla install that is the target while being co-existent (and all processes being review to remove all customs)

Oracle doesn't provide any coex between XE & 9.2.

Does somebody went through a similar situation like this before? Any suggestions with tools to transfer data 'real-time' and 'differ'? Any suggestions on how to attack this?

Any comments are welcome. Cloud not an option for the site.

Thanks!

 

[Alex Blasenheim]

If you are talking about a billion dollar company, then there is no simple answer. You will need to do plenty of analysis to make the best decision on moving forward. My area is Financials so I'll touch on this. My first inclination is to go with the quickest and most obvious setup: z-files. This is not exactly real time but can be close to it. The most common issue here is duplication of master records like customers and suppliers. This is a battle I've seen over and over despite customized programs to prevent duplication or to rid of it. Open AP and Open AR can easily be imported again using the batch z-files. Journal entries can be easily imported via spreadsheets, z-files, etc. What's important here is that a set of controls need to be made for accuracy and efficiency. Remember that all Financial transactions will need some type of controlled account translation table.

JDE XE is this case is treated as a legacy system with the advantage that many fields are the same. Many years ago I was on a team at a client that had several acquired companies on QAD systems. The requirements was to shoot all GL, AP , and AR transactions in real time from these systems to a corporate JDE EnterpriseOne system. In a nutshell, we did this by building adapters and IBM hardware that pulled triggered data from the sources, translated into XML format, and called the appropriate EnterpriseOne business functions creating the transactions. I'm just borderline technical (with an RPG programming background from 100 years ago) so that's the best I can explain. The same concept can be applied for you.

 

[fauberte]

Good morning Alex...Thanks for your input. Much appreciated.
We Z-Files on the potential path but they required another steps of validation that the business would prefer to avoid.

Any others input is welcome. We will post our progress for the benefits of all.

Regards!

 

[altquark]

There are actually a couple of options.

The "simplest" option is to install 9.2 on a second system, and then provide an integration between Xe and 9.2 - so that you summarize financials, for example, in 9.2 - and gradually phase in 9.2 and phase out users on Xe.

I say "simplest" - but its no-where near simple. It requires you to create customizations in your 9.2 environment and to identify exactly how to run the Xe to 9.2 integration.

I'd recommend that the first step would be to likely go-live on Financials, because usually financials has the fewest modifications to JDE code (most financial modifications are usually additional reports, etc). Move your financials team onto 9.2 - and then create integrations between whatever functionality you have left and the 9.2 financials. Treat Xe as a legacy system, and then identify the next functionality to phase in. It has already been suggested to use Z files to integrate with - but other methods including XPi to BSSV might be possible to provide a real-time integration between Xe and 9.2. Again, doing it real-time will require some effort - but will provide what you're looking for.

A second, much MUCH more difficult way (and very specialized) is to use Oracle Goldengate between Xe and 9.2. Trust me, this is not as easy as it sounds - I did something similar between Xe and 9.0 a while back, and it ended up costing a BUNCH of money not just for the Goldengate product, but also for the immense task of identifying every single data item and working out how the data items differ between the two versions. I have experience of this, and know of expertise that would undertake this task - but it took a team a LOT of work to create a co-existant Goldengate between Xe and 9.0 - and then unfortunately it provided the Xe users an "excuse" not to migrate. Co-existance always provides an "out" for certain users not to make the jump - hence the better first method (integrating Xe and 9.2).

Given the number of modifications - you should absolutely get a consultant that has done something like this before (ahem) - and utilize a tool like Boomerang so that moving the code from Xe to 9.2 is done as quickly and as simply as possible.

This is a very quick answer to a VERY in-depth discussion that would have to take place, evaluating what systems you have in place currently, what functionality you are using, and what integrations you currently use. If your company is a multi-billion dollar company - I would STRONGLY suggest spending a few pennies in getting a Technical Architect onsite for a few weeks to identify exactly how to best achieve this.

Feel free to call me anytime !

 

[fauberte]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for your input. That's pretty much where we are going so far. We are studying a SOA software they have internally with a mix of XPI / BSSV.
Golden Gate isn't an option for now pretty much for the reasons you mentionned.
We won't need Boomerang as we are going mostly vanilla.

Any experience with a product like Attunity?
http://www.attunity.com/sites/default/files/product_resource/Attunity-for-JD-Edwards-Data-Sheet.pdf

Thanks!

 

[altquark]

Attunity is more of a data replication tool rather than a transaction-based messaging system. I have worked with Attunity in the past for Reporting - and its just "another" ETL tool for BI. When it comes to replication - I actually helped write a core piece of the JD Edwards replication (for my sins) back in the day when I was at JDE, so I do know a little bit about replication ! It might be possible to utilize replication to "ETL" from 9.2 to Xe and vice versa - but again, it would take a lot of work to identify each data dictionary item and provide the differences. Utilizing any sort of replication to do this wouldn't really be any different effort than the Goldengate scenario. It'd be a hard slog of work AND would result in those users in Xe having an "excuse" not to get off their Xe system !

I'd be interested in knowing what SOA Software they have internally - Webmethods, Oracle SOA Suite, Microsoft BizTalk or IBM MQ Series are the main ones that I have experience in and would provide the best solutions for this.

 

[fauberte]

Hi Jon,

I just been told that have Web Methods 8.5

http://www.softwareag.com/corporate/products/new_releases/webmethods9/overview/default.asp

So definitely an option that I will look as they have something internally. I'm worried about the volume with AR/GL...Which can hit half-millions records a day for both F03B11 / F0911.

Will update once I meet the Webmethods experts.

Regards

 

[altquark]

WebMethods was the "middleware of choice" for Xe customers - and its likely it was selected back when you started to be an Xe customer and its continued to be updated and utilized over the past 15 years or so ("XPi" is actually WebMethods). Theres no issue with WebMethods - its actually a great middleware co-ordinator. It should also easily handle hundreds of thousands of transactions on a daily basis provided you architect it properly. You'd likely utilize RTE in Xe to create messages that will be picked up with BSSV in 9.2 - and providing the Chart of Accounts is simply the same between versions, then there shouldn't be any issue whatsoever. If the Chart of Accounts IS different, its also possible, but there is a bigger "routing" that might have to occur at the middleware layer.

Looking forward to hearing more !

 

[fauberte]

Hi Jon,

We seems to have to have a problems connecting BSSV / BSFN between Webmethods 9.12 and JDE 9.2, tools 9.2.0.5...Do we have a special adapter required between WM & JDE? Is it something you faced?

Thanks!