Asckey Data Services has the experience & software tools to re-build your legacy applications

The computer business uses the term “Legacy Application” to refer to all those applications dating from several years (or more) ago. With the passing time, these old software applications, while essential for the organizations that depend on them, are becoming a nightmare for programmers and maintenance engineers. Despite this, legacy applications also represent years of accumulated experience and knowledge, which, given software engineers who can still understand the language and coding style in which they were developed, represents a huge short cut in the increasingly necessary process of re-design to meet today’s needs and opportunities. Legacy applications also contain essential long term data which is of huge value to the business.

The problem is, while usually doing the job they were designed for, these applications are lagging behind today’s needs for any of the following reasons.

Pre Windows “Character mode” interface
As well as being self-evidently an old application, character mode based applications are usually much harder to use than windows applications, for all sorts of reasons. Most of these are to do with the way Windows has enabled much more flexible and multi-purpose applications, look-up lists, tabular entry, and many other concepts that could not even be envisaged in a character mode style of working. Evolution of software engineering techniques have also meant that these applications are inherently much harder to maintain than current generation ones.

Legacy is not always Character mode
Windows has been around long enough to render some early applications almost “Legacy”, and the arrival of the Internet has accelerated that process. For example, while a 10 year old Windows application may be more up to date and flexible than a 20 year old character mode application, it is no more likely to have woken up to the opportunities the Internet has brought to us.

Functionally out of date
Business needs never stop evolving, but all too often software applications do, and become well out of sync with business needs. That is sometimes just disinclination to change, but very often the application has been changed so many times that making more changes becomes more and more prone to unexpected side effects. Or it may be because the staff that developed the application have all changed jobs or retired.

This problem of it being hard to keep updating applications is a result of the development techniques prevalent up to the 1980s and early ‘90s. Since the arrival of the subsequent “Object Oriented” approach which is now universal, we are much closer (when properly applied and with the tools that support it) to eliminating this problem for the future, a very powerful argument for redevelopment in itself.

Proprietary Database
Legacy applications, particularly PC applications, will usually use a proprietary data format to hold their data. Today, industry standard relational databases based on SQL are well within the reach of all businesses, and for the smaller business, even available at no cost.

By definition, industry standard databases are universally recognised, meaning that accessing the data they contain from reporting tools, spreadsheets etc is a well understood and provided for operation. The older generation of proprietary data formats may well offer tools, such as ODBC connectivity, but experience shows that these are becoming more and more difficult to keep updated as the ODBC client software (eg Crystal, Excel) and the (Windows) Operating system continually evolve.

Our development tools create applications that are capable of using any of the industry standard databases, removing this element of uncertainty and growing difficulty. Conversion of historical data is almost always possible, but does depend on the source database having the necessary tools to extract the data. Another reason to update before such abilities are lost, or the understanding of their use is lost.

The Internet - New technologies, new Opportunities
Legacy applications by definition were around before the seismic changes the Internet has brought to business, consumers and application end users. Today, it is perfectly possible to make a “Desktop” application available to a wide audience via Internet connection (and we do), but you wouldn’t want to do that with the typically hard to use Legacy style application.

The Impact of the Internet
Much more than this is the wider implication of Web capable applications, and the direct publication and even updating of application data. The obvious example - ten years ago, you either shopped in person or filled in a catalogue order and posted it off. Your order was then entered into the sales orders application (staff costs, error prone, time consuming). Today – we all shop via the Internet, cutting out swathes of staffing costs, delays, errors.

Many business functions are following the same evolution – Travel bookings, Holiday bookings, Fault Reporting, booking appointments, rooms, training, “you name it”. The opportunities are legion, and the costs of not doing it are that if you don’t someone else will – or probably is, right now. Businesses that don’t wake up to this opportunity are losing ground to those that have.

You can’t simply put a legacy application “into” a web browser, but the good news is that you can very often add direct data visibility and data entry interfaces to existing application data through a Web Browser based application.

Time is running out
Software programmers familiar with old style coding, and old style program structures are coming up to retirement. Currently, we are still in the best window of opportunity to handle legacy application updating efficiently, because many software engineers have worked in both the old and new style. But - that situation will now be unwinding, with fewer having the experience to extract the key functionality from the legacy application code, and fewer capable of, and sympathetic to, the development of a smooth evolution from old to new rather than a “big bang” leap in the dark.

We specialise in Legacy Application Updating.
Our senior programmers are all experienced in unravelling the sometimes hard to follow coding of legacy applications, while all our programmers are occupied full time with Windows and Web Application development

We have a particular speciality in understanding DataFlex applications. DataFlex powered many applications in Government and general business, and manifestly still does, from the regular telephone calls that start off “We have a DataFlex application built in the 1980s – can you help us bring it up to date?” The current, Visual DataFlex is a natural successor,and an ideal vehicle for redevelopment, as it can use the native DataFlex data file format while also being able to use current generation industry standard databases like Microsoft MS SQL Server, Oracle, etc, and core application code can be re-used even in Windows and Web targeted re-development.

Dataflex logo

VDF_SM

This means that:-

You will be able to keep some core processing as is (keeping costs down)
You will be able to keep your crown jewels – your historic data
We can concentrate on building new functionality to meet new needs
Graceful evolution, not a "big bang" with all the risks involved.

Email us, or call us on 0845 2707747 - we are always happy to discuss how we can build on your existing bespoke business applications

Legacy Applications Updating