Aldon Lifecycle Manager (IBM i Edition): Change Management for Infinium

Programmers working with Infinium applications frequently modify source code, change other vendors’ software and even modify or create homegrown source code. Aldon Lifecycle Manager (IBM i Edition) balances the programmer’s need for flexibility, the manager's desire for control and the end-user's demand for high quality, customized applications. Whatever the need, Aldon's award-winning change management system meets software development and maintenance challenges.

Flexibility And Automation For The Programmer

By handling everything from simple access control to complex development scenarios such as multiple version management, Aldon reduces the manual, repetitive and administrative portions of the development process by automatically moving objects between development, testing and production. Further, Aldon distributes code to one or more production machines, allowing software installation across the network. Similarly, it moves code onto multiple development machines to be worked at multiple locations.

Security And Information For The Manager

From management’s perspective, Aldon Lifecycle Manager (IBM i Edition) secures a firm's valuable software assets. Aldon enforces a strict software development pathway. Define the path, establish the standards and assign levels of developer authority based on the environment (e.g., development, testing and production) and on the activity (e.g., checkout and promote).

Aldon automatically documents developer activity, providing management a detailed audit trail of code changes. Managers see the activity performed, who performed it, when it was performed and -- most importantly -- why. Historical information is organized into useful management reports using the sub-setting feature.

Communicating Quality To The User

Through enforcement of the development pathway, all modifications flow through the system the same way. All objects affected by or contributing to a change are processed together, resulting in a consistent and efficient approach to application development that reduces human error and saves time.

Aldon project management capabilities keep end users in the loop. Users submit requests, check the status of projects and communicate with programmers through the project notes feature. Access detailed information such as the estimated time to completion, the priority assigned to the project and the programmers working on it.

Automate Infinium Upgrades

When Infinium applications are modified, Harmonizer, Aldon's source compare and merge tool, automates the upgrade process, eliminating sixty to eighty per cent of new release upgrade work. In the time it takes to compile the code, Harmonizer compares Infinium's current release to the new release and merges the versions, resulting in code that incorporates both sets of modifications.