Only mainframes are Legacy System?

[Mahima R]

Hi,

What is a Legacy System? Are only mainframes Legacy System? Often I wonder, if it just means some systems which were built in the early years of computers or..?

[zprogrammer]

A very good explanation on Legacy system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_system

[William Collins]

Nah. Another fashionable bit of nonsense, bandied about by people who know nothing about Mainframes and who feel that any Mainframe must be at least 30 years old.

[Anuj Dhawan]

I find these as classic, from the article:

Where it is impossible to replace legacy systems through the practice of application retirement, it is still possible to enhance (or "re-face") them. Most development often goes into adding new interfaces to a legacy system. The most prominent technique is to provide a Web-based interface to a terminal-based mainframe application. This may reduce staff productivity due to slower response times and slower mouse-based operator actions, yet it is often seen as an "upgrade", because the interface style is familiar to unskilled users and is easy for them to use. John McCormick discusses such strategies that involve middleware.
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The computer mainframe era saw many applications running in legacy mode. In the modern business computing environment, n-tier, or 3-tier architectures are more difficult to place into legacy mode as they include many components making up a single system.
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Virtualization technology is a recent innovation allowing legacy systems to continue to operate on modern hardware by running older operating systems and browsers on a software system that emulates legacy hardware.

Saw??

Virtualization technology is a recent innovation??

[Mahima R]

I read the article and am more confused than before.

Nah. Another fashionable bit of nonsense, bandied about by people who know nothing about Mainframes and who feel that any Mainframe must be at least 30 years old.

What is non fashionable bit about it? Can you please help?

[Mahima R]

I find these as classic, from the article:

Where it is impossible to replace legacy systems through the practice of application retirement, it is still possible to enhance (or "re-face") them. Most development often goes into adding new interfaces to a legacy system. The most prominent technique is to provide a Web-based interface to a terminal-based mainframe application. This may reduce staff productivity due to slower response times and slower mouse-based operator actions, yet it is often seen as an "upgrade", because the interface style is familiar to unskilled users and is easy for them to use. John McCormick discusses such strategies that involve middleware.
.
.
.
The computer mainframe era saw many applications running in legacy mode. In the modern business computing environment, n-tier, or 3-tier architectures are more difficult to place into legacy mode as they include many components making up a single system.
.
.
.
Virtualization technology is a recent innovation allowing legacy systems to continue to operate on modern hardware by running older operating systems and browsers on a software system that emulates legacy hardware.

Saw??

Virtualization technology is a recent innovation??

Saw your reply late. If the article is not correct then what can be the correct definition for the legacy system? Is it about age of the system or the software and hardware in use? Or what?

[William Collins]

There is nothing "non fashionable" about it. Fashionable I wrote.

The way it goes is

Person A: It's a Legacy System

Person B: OK, it's clear we need to get rid of it then, and in the meanwhile blame it for any disasters that we have around here

Note that neither Person A nor Person B knows anything about Mainframes, probably nothing about the actual system(s), and perhaps nothing even about computing. It does not disqualify from from taking part in such a learned (that is pronounced ler-ned) exchange.

[William Collins]

Saw your reply late. If the article is not correct then what can be the correct definition for the legacy system? Is it about age of the system or the software and hardware in use? Or what?

It's a meaningless expression in itself. You have to be aware what the actual speaker at the time means by it. There is no definition worth a pile of beans, for this reason.

[Robert Sample]

You have to know the context for the question to have any meaning -- I've seen Windows applications, for example, called legacy systems by Java coders (and there was no mainframe involved).