Potential Problems
Legacy systems are considered to be potentially problematic by many software engineers for several reasons (for example, see Bisbal et al., 1999).
- Legacy systems often run on obsolete (and usually slow) hardware, and spare parts for such computers may become increasingly difficult to obtain.
- If legacy software runs on only antiquated hardware, the cost of maintaining the system may eventually outweigh the cost of replacing both the software and hardware unless some form of emulation or backward compatibility allows the software to run on new hardware.
- These systems can be hard to maintain, improve, and expand because there is a general lack of understanding of the system; the staff who were experts on it have retired or forgotten what they knew about it, and staff who entered the field after it became "legacy" never learned about it in the first place. This can be worsened by lack or loss of documentation. Comair airline company fired its CEO in 2004 due to the failure of an antiquated legacy crew scheduling system that ran into a limitation not known to anyone in the company.
- Legacy systems may have vulnerabilities in older operating systems or applications due to lack of security patches being available or applied. There can also be production configurations that cause security problems. These issues can put the legacy system at risk of being compromised by attackers or knowledgeable insiders.
- Integration with newer systems may also be difficult because new software may use completely different technologies. The kind of bridge hardware and software that becomes available for different technologies that are popular at the same time are often not developed for differing technologies in different times, because of the lack of a large demand for it and the lack of associated reward of a large market economies of scale, though some of this "glue" does get developed by vendors and enthusiasts of particular legacy technologies (often called "retrocomputing" communities).
Read more about this topic: Legacy System
Famous quotes containing the words potential and/or problems:
“The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technology’s potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)