McCue Systems

Headquartered just south of San Francisco in Burlingame, California, McCue Systems Inc. (MSI) has been the leading developer of software solutions for leasing companies for more than a quarter of a century. Simply stated, McCue Systems improves the operational productivity of leading leasing companies throughout the world through innovative use of technology. Until 1991, these solutions were only available on Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX platforms running the OpenVMS operating system.

In 1991, MSI faced a marketplace that was less than accepting of proprietary systems such as DEC’s VAX/Alpha OpenVMS. MSI asked Sector7 to provide consulting services to evaluate the feasibility and cost of migrating MSI’s core application, LeasePak, to UNIX technology that would provide broader market acceptance.

Sector7 has a five-step blueprint process for moving applications from OpenVMS to AIX. The first step was an assessment. During the assessment, Sector7 performed a situational analysis. The application was developed using BASIC, DCL, FMS, RMS, and SMG. These technologies were critical to MSI’s system. DCL is the control language for OpenVMS, allowing users to automate and script tasks. FMS (Forms Management System) allows the programmer to create forms on a VT terminal and accept data from user programs, while RMS (Record Management System) handles indexed, relative, and sequential files integrated with the VMS operating system. SMG (Screen Management Services) provided MSI with 620 screens for various operations.

After the analysis, Sector7 worked with MSI to develop a migration approach that reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Sector7 offered a low-risk migration approach, making the minimum amount of changes necessary to ensure that the code functioned on the new system. This method allowed MSI to quickly get the code up and running on UNIX while addressing issues such as text translation, non-portable code, and hardware differences. This migration approach minimized risk, making it possible to follow up with more improvements for performance and design efficiencies.

The solution selected by MSI involved migration. BASIC was ported to C using Sector7’s VX/BASIC tool. VX/BASIC analyzed and converted VAX BASIC to C, enabling it to compile and run on UNIX. For RMS, MSI selected Sector7’s VX/RMS product, which allowed programs accessing RMS to function without changes on UNIX. All VMS file types and access modes were supported, ensuring that relative, sequential, and block mode files could be accessed via the UNIX file system. Additionally, VX/DCL was used to migrate DCL scripts. VX/DCL provided an implementation of DEC’s VMS Digital Command Language for UNIX, allowing all command scripts to run on the new platform. Finally, for FMS, Sector7 employed VX/FMS, which faithfully replaced the VMS FMS library, providing the same APIs and using the same forms definition files as the original system.

The migration project was completed in six months. With the successful completion, MSI was able to retain its valuable software investment while leveraging corporate-standard hardware and software technologies, significantly improving market acceptance. MSI continues to rely on Sector7 for ongoing support and enhancements as they further optimize and modernize their leasing software systems.

• Migration of 800,000 lines of BASIC code to C.
• Seamless transition of 350 RMS files from OpenVMS to UNIX.
• Conversion of 224,000 lines of DCL scripts using VX/DCL.
• Implementation of VX/FMS for seamless form management on UNIX.
• Successful migration of 620 SMG screens to UNIX with full functionality.

This successful migration allowed McCue Systems to move away from proprietary systems while maintaining operational continuity, reducing TCO, and improving market reach.