The aim of this project is to investigate issues in the evolution of mainframe-based legacy systems to Intranet-based systems. We plan to focus on three key areas namely system modelling, user interface design and system management. The industrial partner in the project is the NatWest bank.
The original proposal suggested that configuration management should be considered but since we have appointed a researcher with interests in security, we decide to focus on this aspect of system management rather than configuration management.
Work in progress involves studies of the impact of legacy systems in
business processes, investigations into the migration of forms-based interfaces
to browser-based interfaces and the preparation of a comprehensive report
on security issues which impact on Intranet-based working.
Migrating from character-based interfaces to web-based interfaces
This report arises the issues involved in translating the forms-based interfaces which are commonly used in centralised legacy systems to web-browser interfaces. We also discuss the technologies which may be used and present a set of recommendations which hep designers of web-based interfaces for legacy systems.
The advantages of such a translation are platform independent application access and simpler application integration. However, although direct translation is not difficult to achieve with the latest version of HTML, this does not necessarily lead to improved user interfaces.
Banking on the Old Technology: Technological Legacies and the Labour Process.
This paper presents some results from a long term empirical investigation of computer systems in use in financial services. It addresses conventional concerns with the relationship between new technology and 'skill', productivity and so on in a rather different fashion, by focusing on the issue of 'legacy'. Computer systems have been installed for some time and no matter how well they may have fitted the situation initially, usage and the circumstances of use have changed; needs and users change, and, most importantly, the organisation itself may well have changed (Henderson & Kyng1994). Although brought to the foreground of public attention by concerns surrounding the 'millenium bug', legacy issues have a far wider organisational purchase and relevance emphasising the idea of IT as constraining various kinds of organisational behaviour and activities, constraints that need to be skillfully negotiated by those at work. A number of examples of legacy issues and their impact on everyday working are presented suggesting that 'legacy' is not merely a problem facing organisations with aging mainframes and dated software.
An ethnography of 'everyday admissions work'..
This fieldwork report presents the findings of a brief - 'quick & dirty' - ethnographic study of some aspects of the admissions process in the University; in particular the work of the various staff in the Admissions Office in University House and the associated admissions work in a number of departments in the University. The report attempts to provide some 'sensitivities' to the everyday work of admissions, presented in terms of 'routine' work, 'coordination' work and so on, particularly in so far as these might provide instantiations of the impact of 'legacy' issues on everyday, routine work.
This is an abstract for the SEBC workshop.
The Centre for Software Maintenance at the University of Durham maintains a list of associated projects on legacy systems which have also been funded by the EPSRC.