Since then a lot of things have changed:
- The java SDK is now in version 8. It was version 4 in 2006 and things like generics were unheard of
- Programming patterns have become common practice
- Multi-threading techniques have improved and are better understood
- Use cases which used to be centered around remote procedure calls to CICS programs, now deal with massive imports of mainframe data for Big Data Analytics
Some parts of LegStar are showing their age and I have finally found some time to start rewriting some of the core features. The LegStar core project is the older in the product so this is where I started.
The legstar-core2 project is where I placed the new developments.
You should not consider this as a replacement to the current LegStar though:
- There are far less functionalities in legstar-core2 at the moment than in LegStar
- The API V2 will not be backward compatible
That second point may come as a surprise for mainframe users but in the world of open source, breaking compatibility is an "art de vivre". A primary benefit is that the code you get is much cleaner and readable when it does not need to deal with legacy. When the project evolves though, we might want to work on a migration guide of some form.
The new legstar-core2 project contains a simplified version of the legstar-cob2xsd module which is the venerable COBOL to XML schema translator. The changes are minor in this module so far. Neither COBOL, nor the XML schema specs have changed much.
From an architecture standpoint the major change is that JAXB is no longer central to the conversion process. So far, we were always going through the JAXB layer even if the target was Talend, Pentaho, JSON, or any other format.
Now the conversion logic has been abstracted out in a legstar-base module. There is also an associated legstar-base-generator module that produces artifacts for legstar-base. The legstar-base module can be considered a complete low-level solution for mainframe to java conversions. This new legstar-base module has replaced the legstar-coxbapi and legstar-coxbrt modules.
JAXB is still supported of course with 2 new modules, legstar-jaxb and legstar-jaxb-generator which cover the old legstar-coxbgen features.
Besides the architectural changes, there are 2 important changes you need to be aware of:
- The legstar-core2 project is hosted on Github, not on Google code. Therefore source control has moved from SVN to Git.
- The licence is GNU Affero GPL which is not as business friendly as the LGPL used by LegStar
Again, this is just the beginning on this new project and its likely to make its way to the newest developments first (such as legstar-avro). Over time, I will describe the new features in more details. In the meanwhile please send any feedback.
Fady
