QAT Makes QAT Function Manager 2008 Free!

by Karie Barrett

Q.A. Technologies has been developing and working with custom functions, which implement functionality not provided by the native functions in an original "out-of-the-box" CA Gen installation, for several years. QAT Function Manager was created to automate the maintenance of these custom functions. It allows users to import custom functions, register them into Gen Models, define and compile custom function code into runtime library or implement a third party runtime library, add action diagram statements to Gen applications using custom functions, and generate and install a Gen application.

Over the years, QAT has created several valuable libraries for CA Gen and several other products are based on these custom function libraries. Having experienced the productivity gains from utilizing custom functions within their own business, making QAT Function Manager available for free to the rest of the Gen community is a notable gift. So why make it free? Rollie Stephens, Vice President of QAT and a long time supporter of the CA Gen product, said “We think it’s time that other vendors and the CA Gen customer base get more involved with custom functions. There are several vendors around the world that have valuable functionality they could provide and distribute in the form of custom function libraries and we want to promote that for the benefit of the CA Gen community. Of course, we also hope that customers will have a look at some of the other function libraries we already have available and consider purchasing those libraries. In order to get things started, we’re making QAT Function Manager a free download and we’re giving away a valuable File I/O library.”

You’ll find all of the details about custom functions and the free QAT Function Manager 2008 on the QAT web site.

http://www.qat.com/qat_functionmanager.asp

Get downloading and trying custom functions soon!

Are you upgrading to CA Gen 7.6?

Making the decision of whether or not you should do the latest upgrade of CA Gen is not something done lightly or quickly. Upgrading Gen has wide spread implications for IT staff, application users, and the business overall. Not upgrading also has widespread implications. Whether you decide to upgrade now, wait, or get out of Gen all together, there are many things to consider, of which we’re only going to highlight some of the main points here for your consideration in making this important decision.

Why upgrade?

CA announced it was discontinuing support for r7.0 last summer and has also announced that support for Release r7.5 is now scheduled to be discontinued as of December 31, 2008. Any previous releases have been out of support for some time now. Although many CA Gen customers are currently on past releases, the current 7.6 release is significant because of the unusually long time frame it will be supported. The CA Gen 7.6 release is likely to be supported until at least mid-2010 making this an excellent release to get current with. Of course, it also has several significant benefits that make it a compelling upgrade as well:

New CA Gen White Paper Available

CA is pleased to announce the availability of a new whitepaper - The Benefits of Model Driven Development - MDD in Modern Web-based Systems, written by Michael Azoff – Senior Research Analyst with Butler Group. This paper discusses the evolution of application development, the benefits of model-driven approaches and how CA Gen has helped numerous customers successfully transition to new platforms, web-based architectures and SOA. Butler Group provides insight as to how CA Gen fits perfectly into the new world of loosely coupled composite applications, increasing business agility while lowering the costs of application ownership.

Please share this paper with all of your CA Gen colleagues. It is an excellent endorsement of the benefits of model-driven development and how CA Gen has maintained its leading capabilities in the MDD market. This paper is a great resource to help organizations understand why they should continue (or start) developing their mission critical applications using CA Gen.