The use of a comprehensive Software Change Management (SCM) solution such as
TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 can provide many advantages. Without doubt, TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 is noteworthy for its unified, efficient approach to System i - centric, multi-platform change management.
UNICOM leverages the latest technologies to bring you unique features that save your developers time, reduce risk, and improve software quality. Check out some of the technology behind TURNOVER® for iSeries v100:
- Single-Server Solution
- Single Audit Database
- Low Impact Implementation
- Flexibility and Openness
- Robust Promotion and Recovery
- Enforced Workflow
- Productivity Tools
- IBM System i Roadmap Support
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Single-Server Solution
A key technical advantage to TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 is that the entire solution runs on the System i. That means lower operating costs, less administrative overhead, and a far lower risk of your issue tracking or PC development getting out of synch with your System i development.
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Single Audit Database
TURNOVER® for iSeries v100's secure, reliable System i database consolidates all information regarding software changes to any of your applications, regardless of platform, into one place. Auditors can easily follow a sample set of changes through the entire lifecycle to make sure they were implemented according to policy.
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Low Impact Implementation
You can implement TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 over your existing library structure for native development, greatly reducing implementation time. It supports any number of development and test environments. Built-in wizards walk you through the application set-up process. A graphical application designer helps your developers understand at a glance how an application is defined and managed, and makes set-up maintenance simple.
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Flexibility and Openness
With TURNOVER® for iSeries v100, team members don’t have to compromise functionality to support an enterprise-wide software management process. You are never locked into a specific user interface because all interfaces access the same database. For example, you can start a change in WDSC and, for whatever reason, choose to complete it in 5250 without losing work.
TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 provides many APIs that will allow you to easily add custom processing and integrate the tools you already have into its framework. TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 works with dozens of utilities such as Hawkeye’s Pathfinder
™ and ASC's Abstract
™, development tools such as LANSA
™ and AllFusion 2E
™, and most vendor applications that run on the System i platform.
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Robust Promotion and Recovery
TURNOVER® for iSeries v100's promotion process revolves around its reliable promotion form – a simple concept with powerful capabilities. The form ensures that a change is promoted correctly every time by using TURNOVER® for iSeries v100's error checking and cross-referencing, and by remembering every detail of the promotion – including pre- and post-run commands and creation overrides. It lets you recover all, or just a portion, of a change, and it can even be restarted if a job is cancelled by mistake or interrupted.
Of course, the best way to control risk is to test your process as well as your code. TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 uses the same process to promote changes into your test environments as it does to promote them into production, greatly improving the chance of successful implementation.
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Enforced Workflow
TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 lets IT managers define and implement specific workflow procedures and authorities across all collaborating departments for greater development efficiency and cleaner audits. Because TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 enforces your rules through all supported interfaces, developers and other team members participate in the workflow model from their native environment, whether green screen or graphical, with no additional client software.
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Productivity Tools
You'll find a rich array of productivity enhancers scattered throughout TURNOVER® for iSeries v100, as illustrated by these few examples:
- Only with TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 can you test your changes and the complete compile process without moving anything out of your WDSC workspace. You select the group of objects you want to compile, and the Compile Wizard does the rest. The wizard organizes the compile and puts everything in the right order automatically. It handles all the details for physical files and checks for dependent objects as well as custom compile commands. Everything you need is created in development for you, ready to be tested.
- TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 includes built-in, procedure-level ILE Cross-Reference Support. This useful tool lets you quickly see all of the modules that use an ILE procedure so you can checkout and modify them as needed. When the time comes to compile, TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 automatically finds and rebinds all related programs and service programs.
- TURNOVER® for iSeries v100's Synchronizer lets you retrofit your custom modifications into new vendor releases. Its three-way source compare and merge helps developers understand the impact of a new release quickly and implement it with your in-house changes, keeping your applications thoroughly up-to-date while saving substantial time and effort.
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IBM System i Roadmap Support
Last, but not least, UNICOM lives and breathes the IBM System i Roadmap in our own product development, and we optimized TURNOVER® for iSeries v100 to manage that work. We are in a unique position among change management vendors because we understand what our customers experience when they update their applications and expand into multi-platform technologies. We know firsthand what tools will make the process easier.
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