Since its founding in 1968, CEC Corporation (hereinafter referred to as CEC) has been an independent software company providing ICT services. In addition to supporting a wide range of infrastructure such as mainframes and open servers, the company offers a one-stop service from development to operation, with a 24/7 service desk. CEC has obtained ISO27001 and ISO20000 certifications, and aims to provide safer and more secure services.
The company was tasked with migrating the data for a client's system, which had been in operation for over 30 years, after it was decided to move from a mainframe to an open system. Character code conversion was required, and data processing was also required to make it easier to use in the new system. Therefore, the company used DataMagic in addition to HULFT for data transfer. The data migration is progressing smoothly, with the goal of going live.
Customer Issues
We want to convert and migrate mainframe data into data that can be used in a new open environment.
Benefits of implementation
Character code conversion
Data processing
Within one module
Completed with
In just one month,
Environment construction, development,
Test complete
in a short time
Reliable and stable
Data conversion process
realization
Data processing becomes necessary as data is migrated from mainframes to open systems.
CEC's corporate philosophy is "Contributing to the development of our customers' businesses through high-quality ICT," and the company provides a wide range of ICT services, from mainframes to open systems. In addition to prioritizing quality, the company provides a more comfortable IT environment to deliver technologies, products, and services that are valuable to its customers' businesses. The company enjoys strong relationships of trust with its customers, and has been responsible for the operation and maintenance of many systems for many years. One such example is the contract management system of one customer, which it has been operating and maintaining on a mainframe for over 30 years. The decision was recently made to migrate this system to an open system, with another development company handling the application migration and CEC handling the data migration, converting the necessary data from the current system into a format that can be used on the open system and providing it.
Platform Architect, Business Group, Data Center Services Division
Yoshimi Kubo, Data Center Services Department
"Since we had been using HULFT for some time, we initially thought we could handle the situation using HULFT 's character conversion. However, our current system is a mainframe, and the character code at the migration destination is UTF-8, so the byte length will also change. We realized that it wouldn't be that simple," says Kubo. The total number of contract data items to be migrated amounts to several million, and around 25 types of data, including transaction data, were also to be migrated. "The scale is not that large, but because it has been in operation for many years, there were some inconsistencies in the data. For example, an item that was initially OK with spaces was changed to zero-filled halfway through, and the data did not meet the latest requirements. For this migration, we had to process the data and correct these before providing it," says Kubo. Having determined that it would be difficult to handle the situation using HULFT alone, the company decided to consider introducing a separate tool.
Introducing DataMagic, which offers all the necessary functions at a low cost
When selecting a tool, DataMagic, a member of HULFT family, was one of the candidates. It had been used in other internal projects and had been described as an easy-to-use tool. "We've been using HULFT since around 2000, and it's a fantastic product with exceptional ease of use. I knew I could trust a product from that family," says Kubo. The compatibility with HULFT for data integration and its cost benefits were also deciding factors. "I have experience using other ETL tools, but many of them are expensive. DataMagic 's cost savings mean that its available functions are more limited than those of typical ETL tools, but it had all the functionality we needed for this project," says Tomizawa. Data modification can be handled simply by mapping, just like with ETL tools, and a single module can handle the entire process, from code conversion to data modification. This seemed like it would easily achieve the desired results, so they decided to implement it.
Resolve character code conversion issues with accurate support
When the environment was built and testing began in March 2020, a problem arose with character code conversion. Some parts used half-width katakana characters, which take up one byte on the mainframe but three bytes in UTF-8. This caused field overflows and resulted in data corruption. After contacting Esector Corporation (now CEC Customer Service), a partner of Saison Information Systems (now Saison Technology), they were able to find a solution: use HULFT to convert the mainframe's character code to ASCII or S-JIS, and then use DataMagic to convert that to UTF-8.
Platform Architect, Business Group, Data Center Services Division
Data Center Services Department Chief, Tomikubo Yuki
"We tried it right away and were able to convert the character code without any overflows. If we had to redefine the increased number of digits on the host side, it would have taken a lot of work. We were able to do it without making any changes to the host, which was a great help (Mr. Tomikubo)." Development took about a month, and the cutover for data migration took place in April. Operations were easy to understand by looking at the online manual, and mapping could be set intuitively using the GUI, so things went more smoothly than expected. "If we had to do everything on the host side, it would have taken five to six man-months. I think we were able to shorten the time considerably (Mr. Kubo)."
Platform Architect, Business Group, Data Center Services Division
Data Center Services Department Chief, Tomikubo Yuki
Final adjustments are underway for full production. Utilization in other projects is also under consideration.
Platform Architect, Business Group, Data Center Services Division
Makoto Tomizawa, Data Center Services Department
Currently, the migrated data is undergoing final verification on the new open system, with fine adjustments being made. The final data for production operation is scheduled to be provided in June 2021. "In terms of processing time, the data conversion itself was completed in just a few minutes, which was surprising how fast it was. Even including the time it takes to send the data using HULFT after conversion, it only takes half a day (Mr. Tomizawa)." This means that the migration can be completed in a short amount of time, even when it's time for production, making it easier to plan schedules.
Although the completion of this data migration marks the end of their use of DataMagic, Kubo says they would definitely like to use it again if there are any similar migration projects in the future. "Our use of mainframes has decreased significantly, but we would definitely consider using the combination of HULFT and DataMagic even in cases where we are migrating from an open system to another system," he says.
CEC Co., Ltd.
As an independent software company, we provide a variety of ICT services, with our core businesses being the digital industry business, which supports the digitalization of the entire value chain of the manufacturing industry, and the service integration business, which supports corporate business development, operational efficiency, and work style reform. We handle the entire IT lifecycle, from infrastructure to applications, and from system implementation to maintenance and operation. We aim to contribute to the business development of our customers by providing a "safe," "secure," and "comfortable" IT environment.
Sales partner: CEC Customer Service Co., Ltd.
- The content of this case study is current as of the time of the interview. The content of this case study may change without notice.