Leverage CM M3 to Migrate Historical Data and Business Logic Painlessly

With 150,000 employees in 70 countries, Cargill provides food, agriculture, financial and industrial products and services to the world. The company’s Australian operation needed to retire its IBM i system and save the expenses associated with maintaining it. The company had moved all business applications off the IBM i systems but now it was time to migrate historical data into the new system. This information is critical for reference when there are customer complaints or inquiries about data processed in the old IBM i system.

Cargill looked at a number of solutions to convert the IBM i DB2 data into Excel spreadsheets and MS SQL databases. The main flaw with these approaches was that they only converted the data, not the business logic that would interpret the data and present it in a user-friendly manner. In addition, the payback of these approaches was too lengthy.

Working with integrator HawkBridge, Cargill chose CM First Group’s CM M3 option as the most cost-effective solution to move the data and business logic to a Java/MS SQL solution. Darryl Millington of HawkBridge explained:

Almost all of the other migration suites convert the generated source – which ignores the business rules that are found in a CA 2E Data Model. The M3 migration suite converts directly from the business rules in the CA 2E data model into similar structured business rules in a CA Plex data model. This preserves the investment in business rule development and makes it easier for developers in CA 2E to quickly pick up and understand the business rules defined in CA Plex.

Cargill provided the CA 2E model, and HawkBridge and CM First Group automatically converted it into a working Java/MS SQL solution via CA Plex. HawkBridge then installed the solution, and Cargill converted their data (using scripts provided by HawkBridge) from IBM i to MS SQL.

Cargill’s application has now been successfully migrated, enabling them to retire the IBM i system and reduce costs. By preserving the legacy business rules, CM M3 enabled Cargill to have the data from their old system at their fingertips in their new system.

To learn more about CM M3, visit the product page or download our white paper
An Evolutionary Approach to Modernizing CA 2E Applications.