Oracle is continuing to develop the CNC technology and will incorporate key elements of the CNC technology into its Oracle Fusion project which will pull together technologies from JDE,
PeopleSoft and its own
application software technologies. In the CNC architecture, a company's JD Edwards (JDE)
business software applications run transparently insulated from both the
database where the business data is stored as well as from the client
computer's underlying
operating system and all other intervening JDE business applications servers. In layman's terms, the business programs don't "care" where the data is or which operating system is being used on any of the
end user computers. Neither do the applications servers on which business programs run need to directly "know" what database systems are being called on the data end or back end. The CNC architecture keeps track of this through various database tables that point the business applications to the servers that run or execute the business applications and also include
database connection tools called database drivers that tell the system also where the database servers are and what specific databases to do lookups, data inserts and data extracts from. Because of the key nature of the underlying architecture, a sound CNC infrastructure is critical to the success of a JD Edwards OneWorld installation or implementation. The back-end databases that are supported include
Oracle database,
Microsoft SQL Server, and
IBM DB2 databases. The application server can run on
Windows platforms,
Unix/
Linux, and the IBM System i (formerly known as iSeries and AS/400). The
web server can be
IBM WebSphere (on Windows, Unix/Linux, or System i) or the
Oracle Weblogic Server (on Windows or Unix/Linux). In what has been known traditionally as
client–server environments, applications must communicate across a combination of different hardware platforms, operating systems, and databases as including. The CNC architecture uses a layer of software, called
middleware, which resides between the platform operating system and the JDE business applications. To accomplish this, JDE provides two types of middleware, JDENET Communication Middleware, and JDEBASE Database Middleware. The JDEBASE middleware communicates with the database through ODBC, JDBC, or SQL*Net.
Definition and strengths of the CNC Architecture According to the JD Edwards document,
Configurable Network Computing Implementation, the CNC architecture is defined as follows: "CNC is the technical architecture for JD Edwards OneWorld and EnterpriseOne software. CNC enables highly configurable, distributed applications to run on a variety of platforms without users or analysts needing to know which platforms or which databases are involved in any given task. CNC insulates the business solution from the underlying technology. Enterprises can grow and adopt new technologies without rewriting applications." "Configurable Network Computing an application architecture that enables interactive and batch applications, composed of a single code base, to run across a
TCP/IP network of multiple server platforms and SQL databases. The applications consist of reusable business functions and associated data that can be configured across the network dynamically. The overall objective for businesses is to provide a future-proof environment that enables them to change organizational structures, business processes, and technologies independently of each other."
Multi-foundation capability Another strength of JD Edwards is its multi-foundation architecture. This means one can create separate instances of JDE on different Tools Releases and isolate these releases from each other. This is achieved by creating a separate set of system folders for the other foundation. In the main
configuration file of the applications or enterprise server, JDE.ini, the incoming and outgoing ports are changed to a different one than the other foundation, so if one foundation had port 6015, then the alternate could use 6016. Also, the client-side tools release folder is installed on the deployment server and the
system administrator uses the JDE Planner or installation environment to define another foundation. Subsequent full packages can then be pointed to using this different foundation.
Weaknesses in the CNC architecture Specifications file corruption with JDE Applications up to 8.12 Until the advent of EnterpriseOne applications version, 8.12 running on tools release/service pack 8.96, by far the most vulnerable aspect of the CNC technology was that proprietary object specifications had to be copied from the full client up to the applications server in order for a JDE user's data selection and processing options to be run as requested on the server. If those proprietary specifications became corrupted, the batch application object, in turn, on the applications server could become corrupted. A rebuild and redeploy of the object was the only fix. Likewise, if there is some intervening process that corrupts object specifications as they come down to the client PC, the related object could become corrupted and no longer function correctly. Since applications upgrade E812 and Tools Release or systems or foundational service pack, the proprietary specifications have been replaced with XML-based object properties which have proven to be more stable and less prone to corruption. In the fall of 2008, Oracle brought out the E900 applications release and by the fall of 2010, the tools release was up to 8.98.3.3. E900 Update 1, or E901 is the latest release as of fall 2010.
Specifications portability While copying the object specifications between the different environments within the same system is easy, the code, once developed in any given system, is not easily portable to other systems. JD Edwards has developed a built-in process named "Product Packaging" to address this issue, but it's slow, not easy to use, and is limited in a number of ways. Because of this, it's mainly used to deliver software updates by Oracle itself, while independent software vendors are mostly using third-party tools like Boomerang. Product Packaging supports the export of specifications and E812 and beyond allow for versions to be exported as ZIP files through the action's column in Object Management Workbench.
Specifications readability Object specifications are not easily accessible to retrieve the data from, because they are in a proprietary format. A variety of interesting information is therefore hidden from the view. Some of this data can be retrieved, interpreted, and displayed by the standard JDE software, but in many cases, this may not be enough, not fast enough, or in the desired format. Many third-party software solutions have been developed to fill this gap.
Complexity of the architecture While powerful, the CNC architecture can be enormously complex making it difficult to maintain by anyone except quite senior CNC analysts. It is not uncommon to see 50 servers in some of the larger implementations and all these have to be maintained. While virtualization has helped in some areas, a lot of time has to be invested into keeping all these servers up and operational.
Third party applications scheduler enhancements There are a number of third-party applications that add functionality and programmability to the JDE Scheduler. They include Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler which is a JDE client-based product and Appworx, a third-party server-based scheduler in which scripting and workflow products have been customized for JDE support addressing adding to the
vanilla scheduler that comes with JDE. AutoDeploy, a third-party bolt-on, fully automates the package build and deploy process for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne reducing the complexity of pre-project, project, and post-project codebase maintenance. ==CNC's interface with web-based technologies==