Mainframe computing and the modern agile development methodology called DevOps don’t need to be mutually exclusive. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is showing why.

The agency, which services 6.2 million licensed drivers and identification card holders and processed 16.8 million transactions last year, has successfully adopted DevOps and its continuous integration and development processes without abandoning the database management system and high-level programming language that has served it for 30 years.

“Agile gives us a much, much clearer view of what products we want to build,” Joshua Elkins (pictured), a Virginia DMV software developer, said during a presentation earlier this week at the Software AG International User Groups conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Keeping up with the times

Most of the department’s applications are based on Adabas, an inverted list database from 1971, and about 80% were written in the companion Natural programming language, which was launched in 1979. Although cloud-native development is often associated with more contemporary information technology infrastructure, Software AG has continued modernizing Adabas and Natural to keep them in line with cloud-native constructs. The company has said it will support both at least through 2050.

The most recent language version, NaturalOne, integrates with the popular Eclipse development environment and can expose and use applications via application programming interfaces. That enables the DMV to tie into back-end services such as verifying passports, capturing images of driver’s licenses, sharing data with the National Criminal Information Center, and allowing drivers to manage their EZ-Pass accounts. It’s adopting automated testing and mobile-first development.

Elkins said the stability of the mainframe back end has accelerated the shift to DevOps. “We’ve been able to accomplish quite a bit in a short period,” he said. “It’s a lot easier because we have a reliable mainframe on the back end. It’s not often we have to tell customers we can’t help them.”

Virginia DMV’s experience challenges commonly held beliefs that legacy platforms can’t evolve with the times. Software AG has migrated Adabas and Natural to Linux for both on-premises and cloud deployment. Both can run inside software containers, connect to NoSQL and data lake storage and handle streaming data.

“The team has evolved Adabas and Natural for the future,” said Stefan Sigg, Software AG’s chief product officer. “You can stay on your mainframe, migrate to Linux or integrate with your cloud strategy.”

Culture challenge

Elkins said technology has been less of a challenge to reaching the DMV’s agile development goals than culture. When he joined the development organization, he said, “I was 23, and no one else on the team was under age 60. It was a shock to log into a green-screen terminal.”

At the time, application development adhered to the “waterfall” methodology, in which requirements were defined in advance, and developers and business users rarely interacted. In those early days, code often wasn’t delivered for months, and there was little latitude for change once specifications were finalized, Elkins said.

“Prior to moving to agile, we struggled with prioritization,” he said. “Agile gives us a much, much clearer view. It allows for more adaptive planning and has taught us how to negotiate” with the business side.

But shifting to agile “isn’t as easy as you would think,” he noted. “It takes iterative workflows and multidisciplinary teams. It isn’t an A-to-Z path. You have to eliminate siloes and egos.”

Speed dividend

The payoff has come with a faster and more nimble delivery schedule that has cut wait times in DMV offices, increased motorists’ use of self-service website features, and boosted scores on both customer and employee satisfaction surveys.

The development staff has benefited from broader skills and deeper involvement with the business. “Many people are on the path to becoming full-stack developers, whereas before, they would have been app developers alone,” Elkins said.

The initiative has even helped attract recent University of Virginia graduates who might never consider working in a mainframe shop. “Agile has been fantastic because it’s an opportunity for the real experts to sit with those new people,” Elkins said. “It’s collaborative and continuous.”

Don’t be too quick to pull back the covers on the mainframe, he advised. Referring to the cryptic Job Control Language that manages processing on big iron, he said, “You can imagine their reaction when they had to look at JCL.”

Photo: Paul Gillin/SiliconANGLE