Legacy object modeling speeds software integration
W. B. Noffsinger, Robert Niedbalski, Michael Blanks, Niall Emmart · Communications of the ACM · 1998
Many organizations rely on legacy applications hosted on mainframe computer systems to provide critical information support. They find themselves pressed to integrate the data and business logic of their legacy applications with information systems developed to take advantage of client/server architectures, graphical user interfaces and the new de facto thin client, the HTML browser. The legacy object modeling approach offers significant advantages to an organization that wants to make its legacy mainframe information available to modern information systems and the World Wide Web. It's noninvasive nature allows new applications to access legacy information through the existing and reliable terminal interface without any changes to the legacy application whatsoever. A legacy object model enhances maintainability. Since the model encapsulates all terminal-specific functions and hides all legacy application behavior, only the model needs to be changed when the existing legacy application's screens change.