Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)

Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR)

Engineering Operational Sequencing System (EOSS)

VAX-BASIC to Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)

History: The US Navy, under the auspices of the Navy E-Business office, undertook a major pilot program to assess the feasibility and business value of using commercial automated transformation software to convert legacy code into modern, object oriented, NMCI compliant code. The Navy selected awidely used Navy legacy information system written in VMS VAX BASIC for the pilot. The Engineering Operational Sequencing System (EOSS) provides standard propulsion plant procedures and operating criteria for every ship in the U.S. Navy fleet. EOSS was chosen by the Navy Functional Area Manager (FAM) office for its extreme complexity and the perception that automated modernization of EOSS into NMCI compliant code would be extremely difficult. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), prime contractor, awarded The Software Revolution, Inc. (TSRI) a sole source contract, under the auspices of the Space and Naval Warfare System Command (SPAWAR), to modernize EOSS.

Challenge: To perform the requested documentation and transformation, TSRI software engineers created a VAX-Basic gateway to the JANUS™ Intermediate Object Model (IOM). TSRI was also required to make necessary tool adjustments to include J2EE as a modern target language. In addition to code transformation and re-factoring, TSRI met additional requirements by:

• Designing a new web-based architecture
• Eliminating GOTO statements from the legacy VAX-Basic code
• Constructing an API for VAX RDMS using JDBC
• Emulating the original systems procedure call behavior
• Developing a library to perform formatted I/O
• Improving performance over the legacy system
• Changing VAX-Basic error handling code to Java exceptions

Results: Beginning with a complete documentation of the "As Is" system, TSRI ported the existing VAX hosted EOSS accountability system to a new web-enabled application. The new architecture used Microsoft IIS running on an Intel-based server and J2EE/Oracle running on a Sun SparcServer. Functional equivalency was required, so the legacy system was operated in parallel with the modern J2EE system to globalize the test bed. The new system was significantly faster, otherwise the two applications performed identically. NETWARCOM analyzed the 5 year cost savings of TSRI's automated Legacy System Modernization (LSM). The results were a Cummulative Gross Productivity Savings of $953,000 and a 2.47:1 Return-on-Investment (ROI).

For NETWARCOM's Opportunity Analysis - CLICK HERE

For EOSS Architectural System's Design - CLICK HERE [ NOTE: IE5 or newer required ]