HelpSystems, SoftLanding Partner To Upgrade TurnOver

February 16, 2015 Dan Burger

SoftLanding has collaborated with HelpSystems to obtain more modern cross-referencing and documentation tools for SoftLanding’s widely used change management tool, TurnOver. The partnership, which was announced last week, involves the integration of a more modern version of HelpSystems’ application development tool, called ABSTRACT, with the goal of enhancing software development capabilities for IBM midrange shops using TurnOver.

TurnOver (referred to as TurnOver for iSeries v100 edition in the company’s literature) supports repeatable procedures for developing and maintaining IBM i applications, including issue tracking, project management, development, and deployment. It is used by IBM i ISVs and development departments in IBM i shops to track the lifecycle of IBM i applications, from development through test and production. SoftLanding also has products, separate from TurnOver, that provide IBM i shops with menu management, automated operations, and real-time performance management solutions.

HelpSystems’ ABSTRACT suite of cross-reference and documentation tools is designed to help IBM i programmers foresee the impact that changes may have on other programs. The advantages it provides are speed and accuracy throughout the development processes.

“ABSTRACT allows programmers to understand how their applications work,” says Stacy Jensen, sales manager for the product. “It is a tool that allows the developer to track, document and manage objects on the IBM i. It also allows users to edit source, view object usage, and recreate file relationships, along with a number of other options. New programmers can get up to speed quickly on how applications work and existing programmers can make modifications faster because they don’t have to invest time in manually researching the impact of their software changes.”

ABSTRACT can be used from the green screen and/or a plug-in through Rational Developer for i (RDi) or Navigator for i. It has built-in controls for creating and managing job stream and source flowchart diagrams to visually document and analyze applications. And for your friends in Microsoft development, ABSTRACT also supports Visio.

Jim Fisher, the operations manager at SoftLanding, explained that TurnOver has an interface with older versions of ABSTRACT, but newer versions since HelpSystems acquired the product haven’t been ratified. ABSTRACT came to HelpSystems with the acquisition of Advanced System Concepts (ASC) in 2006, the same year SoftLanding Systems was acquired by UNICOM Systems.

The partnership between HelpSystems and SoftLanding involves both technology and customer referrals.

“We’re initially looking to serve an existing, joint customer-base and provide them with a seamless environment that provides greater utilization of the two solutions, from which productivity gains can be realized,” Fisher says. “Further to that though, we believe that the technology fit will enhance our solution offerings going forward with new business opportunities that arise. It’s obviously early days and we have some research and work to undertake, but it’s a relationship that both parties are looking to embrace and develop.”

In addition to the core TurnOver for iSeries v100 product, SoftLanding offers several add-on modules, including: TurnOver for LanTurn v100 (which provides LANSA functionality); TurnOver for Over:2E v100 (which provides CA 2E functionality); TurnOver for PDQ v100 (which provides data promotion capabilities); TurnOver for ProTurn v100 (which provides support for BCD’s ProGen Plus 4GL tool); and TurnOver for SVN v100 (which supports the open source Apache Subversion code tracking tool). For more information see www.softlanding.com.

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