Forum Moderators: phranque
Though the latest technology seems to get all the glory in running an Internet business, legacy technology still plays a critical role behind the scenes. And companies want to do everything in their power to preserve long-term investments. Enter the concept of legacy renewal. The IBM AS/400 mini mainframe, for example, has been very good to Saab USA, an automobile importer and distributor based in Norcross, Georgia. Since 1988, this 200-person subsidiary of the Swedish car maker has been running its applications for vehicle distribution, warranty, training, management, customer contact, and parts distribution on the AS/400 with great success.
After reading this article, I am amazed that this is is a relatively new movement. (Within the last two years, according to the article.)
I guess it makes sense if you think about it. Big businesses and banks have plunked down a lot of money for a big mainframe to power their applications and have spent a lot of time developing internal applications to best fit their needs.
Even though keeping up the ageing infrastructure is a nightmare it just doesn't make sense to throw it all out; while many say the mainframe is 'going away', it is still the best solution for many situations. (And hey, they may not be finished paying the thing off.)
Now, many big businesses have gotten to the point they MUST update their aging systems. Lucky for them, there is a solution to this: keep the backend and put the interface in a web based format.
I really think this may be something which will employ webmasters in this sagging economy. While companies are cutting back their spending on new equipment, they will still need to hire people who can make the old work with the new. It would cost less to hire someone to make a user friendly front end which can be accessed with the computer on the user's desk than to update the entire system to something else.
I think it is brilliant. Has anyone done a project like this? What were your experiences? I assume XML is needed for this, but is there anything else needed to do this?
I had a pretty good education in it while working for national cash register company in the 80's. I was amazed at the number of machines that would come in for repair that were still from the 60's even. Some had one or two ic's in them that were barely powerful enough to be called a calculator. Yet day-after-day there would be more come in. Often, after 20 years it was the first time the machine had been pulled out of service.
The same is true for quite a few embedded pc systems that were widely distributed in the 80's. Medical equipment, such as xray machines all had some form of embedded pc systems. One of the largest ones I worked on was a system based on the rare Intel 80186. No pc's ever carried the chip that I know of - they went from 8086 straight to 80286's.
Industrial usage seems to be where the older systems are still in day to day use. In the two years, I've done Commodore 64 programming work for a glass house, saw mill, and an airport. They simply don't need to replace the stuff that has been working perfectly for almost two decades. But who will be around to fix it?
