Q&A: Isle of Man Government on the Latest AB Suite Innovations

A self-governing British Crown Dependency, the Isle of Man sits in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. Thirty-three miles long and 13 miles wide at its broadest point, the island is home to a population of around 90,000 individuals.

The Isle of Man Government supports life on the island and provides a multitude of citizen services – encompassing social welfare and emergency response programs, as well as adult education, environmental projects, and everything in between.

One of the core applications that helps the government perform its day-to-day activities is known as “TaxLive.” An Agile Business Suite (AB Suite™) application, the system collects income tax, national insurance, and corporate tax for about 80,000 entities.

We recently spoke with Mitcho Iankov, Senior Software Developer at the Isle of Man Government, about their history with Enterprise Application Environment (EAE) and AB Suite and how his team is using the development environment’s latest innovations to help the government better serve its citizens.

Developing Agility: When did you move from EAE to AB Suite?

Mitcho Iankov: The system was initially developed in 1996 and went live on EAE in 1999. We moved the runtime to Microsoft® Windows® in 2003 and then migrated to AB Suite 2.0 in 2012.

After the migration, we used every opportunity to piggy back on a business project to make the system more object-oriented and use classes wherever possible, so we could improve code readability, reusability, and maintainability. By encapsulating the code in methods with parameters and functions, we created highly visible interfaces that document the complexity of the system and allow us to build and expand the TaxLive application.

As a result of these OO changes, the system now has fewer than 300,000 lines of code – versus the 500,000 we had with EAE – but features more functionality than before. Now, writing a new Screen/Ispec takes a day or two, instead of five or six, and requires four or five times fewer lines of LDL+ code.

DA: In 2015 you added new developers to your team. What was their first impression of AB Suite? Was it easy to learn?

MI: Two new trainee developers joined the team after our AB Suite migration. Even though they had no EAE or AB Suite background, it was quite easy to get them accustomed to AB Suite. They did have some Microsoft Visual Studio® experience, which made it easy to understand things like using F5 to start the debugger or using methods and attributes.

DA: You updated from AB Suite 4.0 to AB Suite 5.0 in the beginning of 2016. What were some of the reasons you chose to upgrade?

MI: Unisys presented AB Suite 5.0 at a conference in Amsterdam in September 2014.

I was impressed by the new Client Framework and the replacement of the traditional painter, which we have used virtually unchanged since 1995, with a modern XAML painter.

We received many requests from the business over the years for modern interfaces, such as dynamic colors, buttons with different text, or local list sorting. The new XAML painter gives us all that. What’s also great is that Unisys provided a utility to help us migrate the existing screens to XAML with minimal modification.

DA: What benefits have you experienced with AB Suite 5.0?

MI: AB Suite 5.0 is a 64-bit application and runs smoother on our Windows server, which has been 64-bit for years. Transactions are a bit faster and fewer fail due to dead lock – down from one or two a day to one every three to four days.

DA: We understand you’re currently working on modernization projects using the Agile Business Suite Client Framework. What are you looking to achieve with this new tool?

MI: We have two objectives for the Client Framework. First, we want to replace RATL communication to our Microsoft Model-View-Controller (MVC) web portal with the Client Framework DataModel, which is much easier for C# .Net MVC developers to understand and use. Early binding will prevent lots of mistakes and speed up the MVC development cycle.

In addition, we want to modernize the GUI interface by moving to XAML and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This should help us improve the user experience by giving them more options, such as new color themes, while limiting the training required for new users. XAML is much more flexible, and because all controls are created outside AB Suite, we can mix AB Suite bound controls with controls not bound to anything, like images, URLs, and more. There’s also no need for Java on the desktop because WPF is native to Windows 7 and XAML screens are developed using Visual Studio.

DA: What are some of your first impressions of the Client Framework? Does it make a difference in the way you approach modernization projects?

MI: Developing new screens means we’re able to make the most of the Client Framework’s functionality at design time, though we’re still restrained by the need to have the screen in Presentation Client as well. I can see how our AB Suite system is becoming a data provider – via the DataModel and Client Framework – for modern technologies like XAML, WPF, and MVC, while still being equipped to execute code written 20 years ago.

DA: What are your short-term and long-term plans with Client Framework?

MI: Our short-term plan is to make the Client Framework an appropriate replacement for the current Presentation Client. We have a pilot project of 12 screens, which are nearly ready for user acceptance testing. For now, we will run both GUI interfaces together, but we will use the full capability of XAML once the Presentation Client is completely replaced.

DA: What advice would you offer other EAE and AB Suite users?

MI: If you are still using EAE, you’re limiting your developers’ productivity. Your development life cycle is three times longer than it could be.

Moving from AB Suite 4.0 to AB Suite 5.0 is an update, not a major upgrade. In our case, we did not encounter any major issues and it was seamless for the end users and developers alike. Though we did run into some challenges with the Client Framework, Unisys acted quickly to resolve them, often the same day.

Thanks again to Mitcho for taking the time to speak with us. If you’re curious about how AB Suite 5.0 or the Client Framework can benefit your business, please email us for additional information.