Many organizations have a requirement to have an application use either test or production data without requiring that the application itself be modified. The ability to do so reduces significantly the risk involved in modifying applications immediately prior to their being placed into production mode.
In addition to its partitioning features, Adabas Vista provides a file translation feature that can be used to change file numbers dynamically within Adabas applications at runtime. The file numbers are translated based on the translation information supplied to Adabas Vista.
For example, a Natural program is compiled in a test environment using a test DDM to access file 25 in database 10. After testing has been completed, the program is to to be placed into production using file 67 in database 41. By providing this information to Adabas Vista using translation rules, the switch to production mode can be made without any application modification.
This translation feature can be extended by use of a Profile ID supplied by the application. This, combined with the Profile IDs defined in the translation rule, enables the application to influence the translation dynamically. The use of target category extends this feature even further. There may be several target categories for a single Profile ID, source database ID and source file number combination, each target category having its own target database ID and target file number.
Profile IDs may identify the business area, for example, ACCTS, MANUF. Multiple clients from within the same application can access either the accounts data or the manufacturing data, based on the specific Profile ID supplied to Adabas Vista through API calls. Target categories may be used to identify the specific set of data to use, for example, TEST, PROD. Multiple clients can access either a set of test data or the production files.
