My Experiences Beta Testing AB Suite 6.1

After many years working directly with Agile Business Suite (AB Suite®), as well as many related Unisys products and solutions, I jumped at the opportunity to participate in the beta testing for AB Suite 6.1.

My involvement with the beta test began with the Phase 2 testing, which ran from August to September of 2016. The test included about 20 participants, all of whom were tasked with putting the solution through its paces in a realistic environment.

I was most interested in the enhancements to AB Suite Developer, which include a new Visual Studio Logic Editor and more complete DevOps capabilities enabled by integration with Team Foundation Build.

Documentation

Documentation provided during the beta test included the AB Suite 6.1 Beta Release Notes and the AB Suite Qualification Matrix, which was updated for release 6.1. There were also several new How To documents, ranging from configuring and using Team Foundation Sever for DevOps, invoking Web Services in the MCP environment, enabling and processing XML in a model, and implementing new DMSII feature extensions.

Initial Test Activities

I installed AB Suite on a virtual machine running Microsoft® Windows® 2012, SQL Server® 2014, and Visual Studio® 2015. I had been using this VM with AB Suite 4.0, so the beta test provided a good opportunity to try out upgrading from an existing AB Suite installation to the new version. Minimal changes were required. In this case, only Visual Studio was updated.

After installing release 6.1, the first thing I did was create a new project using the Sample model from the release. I was able to explore the model in Developer, and Build and run it with the Winform client.

Next, I created a project using my own test and training model, MyMDB, which demonstrates and exercises more of the Modeling and Object-Oriented features of AB Suite. I was able to Build and run it with the Winform client and the ASP .NET Web Form interface with no problems.

Ongoing Test Activities

I began treating AB Suite 6.1 as my “go to” version of AB Suite in any of my daily activities where a specific release of the product is not mandated. I loaded a large model – around 300 Ispecs and 200 Reports – and generated the ASP .NET Web Form client.

Then I migrated and loaded a larger EAE model with about 400 Ispecs and over 500 Reports.

After spending time with the Beta 2 features, I installed the Beta 3 version and worked with it on a regular basis, paying special attention to the new TFS Build and XML interface capabilities.

Final Thoughts

As with every new AB Suite release, version 6.1 clearly incorporates many key features clients requested.

From my perspective, the overall quality of AB Suite 6.1 is good. I only encountered a few minor problems with installation, but Unisys engineering team was quick to respond with the necessary workarounds.

The Beta program itself was well run, as well. I would like to offer my thanks to Leanne Bates and the rest of the engineering team. “Good on ya!” as the Aussies say.

Alan Hood worked with AB Suite and its predecessor products for many years as an engineer, architect, program manager, and technical consultant. In 2015 he formed Hood Software Solutions to help people solve their business problems with the aid of technology. He is ready and willing to help you with all aspects of software development, including requirements and architecture, training and mentoring, web, GUI, and mobile modernization, refactoring, and Agile methodology. You can contact Alan on his web site: HoodSoftwareSolutions.com.

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