Fortis Bank Nederland “Enterprise Service Bus”

Due to the expected integration of Fortis with ABN-AMRO the need arose to be prepared for integration. The ESBM project was setup to deliver an Enterprise Service Bus based on WebServices with Soap over http, WS-Security and MQSeries.

Mr Ritter was asked to design and develop an ESB implementation with the following requirements:

• Based on the IBM Websphere Messagebroker platform
• Define modulair building blocks which can be easily replaced and changed
• Support for webservices (WS-Security)
• Http and MQ transport
• Support for error tracking and tracing

In two months he delivered a proof of concept version showing its ability to integrate an Oracle application with a mainframe application. During the demonstration performance test where executed using the SoapUI WebService test tool.

Ford “Visteon seperation”

As part of its efforts to separate from Ford, Visteon is undertaking a Clone project to replicate the legacy applications and systems that Ford currently provides to Visteon. Teams are working on an aggressive timeline to separate in 18 months.

Mr Ritter was selected for his mainframe skills to participate in the process of testing the mainframe jobs scheduled by a CA7 job scheduler. Besides his main assignment he also assisted in solving some issues with MQseries coomunication on the IBM mainframe.

Capgemini Academy “SOA Solutions for Integration Architecture”

Together with two other colleagues Mr Ritter developed a three-day Capgemini Academy course “SOA Solutions for Integration Architecture.  The training includes theory and interactive workshops. Mr Ritter contributed by developing course material based on his practical experience. He acted as a trainer in the first training sessions. This course is still available at the academy.

Click to show course details

The training includes:

• Positionering binnen IAF
• System Domain Architectuur
  • Legacy structuren and Client/Server, batch georiënteerde systemen
  • Multichannel architecturen op basis van Java en .NET
  • Technologieën en producten
• Enterprise Domain Architectuur
  • Service Oriented Architecture als basis voor loosely coupled architecturen, Messaging and Message Brokers
  • Technologieën en producten
• Data-integratie structuren
  • Operational Datastore en Data Warehouse

IB-Groep “Troubleshoot E-Service”

DUO / IB-groep

The IB-Groep is a governmental organization for student administration. The IB-Groep E-service offers direct web access to student load information. The end users on the website complained about problems getting to their data. I was asked to find the root cause of these problems.

The website connects to their back office systems using an MQSeries-based middleware infrastructure running on IBM mainframe, AS400, and Windows 2000. They have been experiencing a variety of errors including lost messages, timeouts, and lost connections. I need to quickly find the cause of these problems, provide solutions, and advise on infrastructure improvements.

How to identify the root cause of the problem? In the absence of sufficient data and monitoring, I took the initiative to establish a measurement system to gather information on the current system behavior. This encompassed network and computer system traces, as well as overviews of response times. I then presented this information to management in a daily spreadsheet, highlighting system availability and periods of outage. This proactive approach yielded valuable results. Upon analyzing the collected data, I confidently identified a serious network issue, internal system performance problems, and non-compliance with the Service Level Agreement with our external mainframe supplier.

Meetings were arranged with the external supplier to optimize the system. Network and system experts were brought in to identify and address any performance bottlenecks. I facilitated collaboration among these experts and conducted thorough testing. Every issue was successfully identified and resolved. Subsequently, I authored a comprehensive report detailing the current system status and outlining the necessary improvements.

Winterthur (Reaal)

Winterthur is looking for solutions to integrate its existing mainframe applications with the internet for building new Business to Consumer applications. The goal of the pilot project was to determine the right direction and final requirements for legacy enablement. Mr Ritter was responsible for designing and developing the complete solution based on IBM MQSeries middleware and the MQSI Message Broker. A proof of concept was delivered and demonstrated to management.

RAET Mainframe services

Computer Science Coorporation is based in Apeldoorn (formerly named RAET) and supports a large IBM mainframe environment for running “in service” applications.

Mr Ritter started as a Network engineer in a SNA/VTAM network environment. He developed maintenance procedures based on TSO/ISPF scripts, created automated maintenance jobs, simplified and tuned network topology. This resulted in improved network performance and he reduced the procedure for introducing new network users from one week to 6 hours. Besides his  daily job as a Network engineer he also worked on a internal project “Release”. Release is now the required procedure for the installation of new software and promotion through the test and production phases.

Netview NPDA

His last project is the introduction of automated operations using IBM Netview application. This resulted in a now fully operational Automated Operations systems based on Netview. This system is activated at system startup (IPL) and controls and monitors all application activity on the mainframe including the external network.

The main console

The bridge

Any alert message is processed and appropiate actions are taken to resolve problems when possible or inform the operator when manual intervention is required.