Defining migration objective for PFC application

Corporate PFC architecture

The following diagram illustrates the typical architecture for PFC applications.

Figure 3. Typical PFC applications architecture

Typical PFC applications architecture

The Corporate Class Library extends the PFC Ancestor Level, and contains customized and enhanced functionality for reuse by various applications within the entire corporate class library. The PFC Extension Level PBLs are included in the Corporate Class Library, and utilized to extend the PFC Ancestor Level. For example, corporate analysts may add intermediate extension level(s) between the PFC Ancestor Level and the Extension Level, or they can use the existing PFC Extension Level.

Depending on the business need and corporate complexity, sometimes the PFC Ancestor Level is extended further into several layers containing corporate departmental standards and business rules. These several layers are all included in the Corporate Class Library.

Defining migration objective progressively

If your PFC application's architecture has a large corporate layer, Appeon recommends that you first aim to migrate a small application to the Web or portion of your existing PFC application to get your framework working on the Web, then expand to deploy a larger portion of your application or the entire application. This progressive approach prevents you from being confronted by many problems at the same time; otherwise, you may be overwhelmed with unsupported features that exist in both the application and the Corporate Class Library.

Step 1: Deploy a small PFC application that consists of the following three parts:

  • A small amount of application-specific logic separated from the Individual Application.

  • Corporate Class Library

  • PFC Ancestor Level

In this step, the application-specific logic should be kept small and simple so you can focus on migrating the PFC Ancestor Level and the Corporate Class Library onto the Web. The PFC Ancestor Level and Corporate Class Library are more important because they are the base classes for all corporate applications.

Step 2: Gradually increase the size and complexity of Individual Applications, and change your focus to fixing the Individual Applications for Web deployment.