Ian C. Blenke wrote:
>
>If there's more important that I've learned over the years, it's that
>Legacy does not die. It outlives the humans that built it in the first
>place.
>
>The best we can do is built backware compatibilities into new systems
>and urge migration. There is no such thing as they One True Ideal
>Solution. Ever.
>
The other "best we can do" is wrap the legacy stuff inside modern stuff.
This is one of the big approaches/promises of CORBA. Take your legacy
code and put individual units of functionality behind CORBA object
methods, and you can develop modern OO software. Your wrappers are
kind-of just translators, but you can designate them as part of the
legacy code...one that plays well with modern tools and technologies.
Similarly, we will probably see a CORBA wrapper (eventually) around the
stop-light communication functionality. I did the same sort of thing
with Electric Meters. A meter reported its energy usage by closing a
relay for 20ms every time it recorded the expenditure of n kilowatt
hours. Talk about a brain-dead protocol! My company put a little
dollop of hardware and software near the meter that speaks TTL and
CORBA. Now, talking to the meters is an Internet-aware OOP excersize!
I think that this kind of 'wrapping' is better than 'building backward
compatibilities into new systems'. You could quibble and say that we
*have* 'built backward compatibilities into new systems', but because
the wrappers are stored and maintained as though they are part of the
legacy system, and because we are not polluting our new solution with
backward compatibility code, I see it differently.
--ronan
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