Encapsulating legacy software for use in client/server systems

Abstract

An alternative to migrating legacy software from the mainframe to a client/server platform is to encapsulate it by wrapping it on the host and accessing it from the new client programs. Recent technological achievements such as the OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and IBM's System Object Model (SOM) have made it possible for distributed objects to communicate with existing applications on the mainframe. However as described here, some alterations have to be made to the old programs to make them accessible. Achieving this promises a new form of coexistence between monolithic legacy systems on the mainframe and object-oriented, distributed systems in the network. It also introduces a new mode of software reuse.