Legacy Guild

A freely formed society of professionals dedicated to the support, maintenance, currency, enhancement, preservation, and transformation of Legacy Systems, with emphasis on modernization with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

General Release v1.1, open to Joining, Subscribing, Forum Posting, and other Operations.

Thank you for visiting our site. For new visitors, please click on the Welcome Page on the Pages menu on the left so that we may introduce ourselves and welcome you!

Our Purpose - Legacy Systems Advocacy

Our purpose is to fill a void - the need for advocacy of Legacy Systems. We do this in a number of ways -
  • by offering a central hub and virtual community for IT professionals who recognize the value of Legacy Systems to interact and freely associate among themselves, so that they may organize to offer support services to organizations using Legacy Systems and who are under the mistaken belief that "support is difficult to obtain";
  • by providing a clearinghouse for publicizing job and project opportunities in Legacy Systems;
  • to offer facts, surveys, and expert opinions to counter the deleterious and misleading myths about Legacy Systems, myths propagated by those who hype newer technologies in an effort to promote only their own self interests;
  • to present Legacy Systems in their true, favorable light, as to their benefits of accomplishing mission critical objectives in a cost effective manner.
In the words of Thomas Paine, "we offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense."

Chief Correspondents Corner

In his first editorial comment, your Chief Correspondent dares to ask the question Is CoBOL the new feminist programming language?, and offers a few answers. Read about it by clicking  here.

Legacy Mainframe Job Opportunities - Indianapolis Area

Clients have needs for Mainframe Testers and Developers. Please click on Job Opportunities menu item to the left for more details. This page is now open only to Legacy Guild members, so if you have not done so already, please Join! See the Login box in the upper left corner and click on Join.

Legacy Project Opportunities - various locations

The Legacy Guild is tracking the awarding of various bids pursuant to issuance of RFP's (Request for Proposals) by various government agencies. Currently we are monitoring the activity of four states and their automated Child Support Enforcement Systems. The status of each is summarized in the Project Opportunities page. This page is now open only to Legacy Guild members, so if you have not done so already, please Join! See the Login box in the upper left corner and click on Join.
 
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings."

from The Walrus and the Carpenter, by Lewis Carroll

We hope you enjoy your visit here. Please join or login if you have joined before.

Image of the Day: Solving Flowchart Med

Awarded to: klshafer2.


Download of the week: Truth Revealed - The Original Waterfall Model by Winston Royce is Iterative

Downloads:
3,337
Added:
December 27th 2013

In this 1970 paper, presented at the Western Conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1970, author Winston Royce sets forth the development steps that came to be known as Waterfall.  Unfortunately, it was a "straw man" version of Waterfall in his Figure 2, a version without iteration and feedback loops, that came to be popularized as "Waterfall". Royce himself was quite emphatic in his graphical portrayal of "modifie…



 

Most Popular Downloads

Objects Never? Well, Hardly Ever!

Downloads:
609
Added:
December 2nd 2013

A thorough challenge to the notions that object-oriented facilitates reuse, is more intuitive, and a more natural way of thinking that other programming languages.

2012-2016 Social Security Agency Strategic Plan for IT Includes CoBOL

Downloads:
485
Added:
December 2nd 2013

Why does the Social Security Agency continue to embrace  CoBOL? In its 2012-2016 Strategic Plan, it states:
"COBOL has served SSA and similar large transactional processing organizations well for over 40 years; COBOL's longevity is a distinct advantage for us, given the support and stability of the product."

2012-2016 Social Security Agency Strategic Plan for IT Emphasizes Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Downloads:
472
Added:
December 2nd 2013

Why does the Social Security Agency embrace Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a key component of its IT strategy through 2016? It is because "SOA is an IT architectural approach that makes use of reusable components or services...Our WebSphere/CICS model supports WebSphere application design and its interface with CICS, allowing us to leverage decades of proven, optimized software while modernizing the user interfaces from outdated 'green screens'…

Social Security Agency's Use of CoBOL - An Inspector General Critique and the SSA's Reply

Downloads:
537
Added:
December 2nd 2013

An interesting exchange between the Inspector General's office on the Social Security Agency's use of CoBOL, its increasing use of Java, and its modernization efforts.  The facts presented as context are as important as the recommendations and conclusions, and underscore the importance of CoBOL to the financial industry. Also interesting is how the SSA's annual budget of $100M for operation and maintance for 60 million lines of code of CoBOL compares fa…

Using the Mainframe to Control IT Service Costs

Downloads:
479
Added:
December 2nd 2013

A presentation by Clabby Analytics. Shows how the distributed systems management model is broken (add capacity = add people). How to fix this broken model using IT service management and emulating what mainframe managers are doing today.

Classical Development Redux: Classical software development methods in an Agile world

Downloads:
485
Added:
December 2nd 2013

A presentation that poses the question: Do the classical software development methods have relevance in an Agile world? The answer is Yes, if incorporated within a Unitary approach which can apply to both Classical and Agile.

Integration Testing - That Grey Area between White Box and Black Box Testing

Downloads:
1,211
Added:
December 2nd 2013

A presentation on Integration Testing - how is it different from white box testing and black box testing? When should you use it? What are some perspectives, techniques, and strategies for performing integration testing?

Robert Glass's Fact #30: "CoBOL is a very bad language, but..."

Downloads:
3,675
Added:
December 8th 2013

Fact #30: "CoBOL is a very bad language, but all the others for business data processing are so much worse."

Robert Glass, notable IT author and contributor to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), waxes insightfully into our love/hate relationship with CoBOL, delving into the differences between domain specific and domain independent languages. In the end, his conclusion: "The r…

Can a Java Programmer be Transitioned to CoBOL

Downloads:
486
Added:
December 26th 2013

Humorously titled, this short paper offers some comparisons between CoBOL and Java. The conclusion is especially apt: "When it comes down to the question of which will best survive, the bottom line is that COBOL can be much more easily enhanced to include web features than Java can be enhanced to handle records. Adding web routines to COBOL is being done; adding record handling to Java is not and cannot be done, without a major change to Java's restrict

Truth Revealed - The Original Waterfall Model by Winston Royce is Iterative

Downloads:
3,337
Added:
December 27th 2013

In this 1970 paper, presented at the Western Conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1970, author Winston Royce sets forth the development steps that came to be known as Waterfall.  Unfortunately, it was a "straw man" version of Waterfall in his Figure 2, a version without iteration and feedback loops, that came to be popularized as "Waterfall". Royce himself was quite emphatic in his graphical portrayal of "modifie…


Most Recent Downloads

Department of Defense MIL-STD-2167 "Waterfall" is Iterative

Downloads:
3,259
Added:
December 27th 2013

Proponents of Agile often ridicule the Department of Defense (DOD) and its MIL-STD-2167 software methodology as stodgy and slow. Though the standard does set forth rigorous documentation standards, and these documentation artifacts are based upon the classical Waterfall stages of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), the narrative within MIL-STD-2167 is quite explicit that the process must be iterative and incremental, two basic tenets for which A…

Truth Revealed - The Original Waterfall Model by Winston Royce is Iterative

Downloads:
3,337
Added:
December 27th 2013

In this 1970 paper, presented at the Western Conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1970, author Winston Royce sets forth the development steps that came to be known as Waterfall.  Unfortunately, it was a "straw man" version of Waterfall in his Figure 2, a version without iteration and feedback loops, that came to be popularized as "Waterfall". Royce himself was quite emphatic in his graphical portrayal of "modifie…

Can a Java Programmer be Transitioned to CoBOL

Downloads:
486
Added:
December 26th 2013

Humorously titled, this short paper offers some comparisons between CoBOL and Java. The conclusion is especially apt: "When it comes down to the question of which will best survive, the bottom line is that COBOL can be much more easily enhanced to include web features than Java can be enhanced to handle records. Adding web routines to COBOL is being done; adding record handling to Java is not and cannot be done, without a major change to Java's restrict

Robert Glass's Fact #30: "CoBOL is a very bad language, but..."

Downloads:
3,675
Added:
December 8th 2013

Fact #30: "CoBOL is a very bad language, but all the others for business data processing are so much worse."

Robert Glass, notable IT author and contributor to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), waxes insightfully into our love/hate relationship with CoBOL, delving into the differences between domain specific and domain independent languages. In the end, his conclusion: "The r…

Integration Testing - That Grey Area between White Box and Black Box Testing

Downloads:
1,211
Added:
December 2nd 2013

A presentation on Integration Testing - how is it different from white box testing and black box testing? When should you use it? What are some perspectives, techniques, and strategies for performing integration testing?

Classical Development Redux: Classical software development methods in an Agile world

Downloads:
485
Added:
December 2nd 2013

A presentation that poses the question: Do the classical software development methods have relevance in an Agile world? The answer is Yes, if incorporated within a Unitary approach which can apply to both Classical and Agile.

Using the Mainframe to Control IT Service Costs

Downloads:
479
Added:
December 2nd 2013

A presentation by Clabby Analytics. Shows how the distributed systems management model is broken (add capacity = add people). How to fix this broken model using IT service management and emulating what mainframe managers are doing today.

Social Security Agency's Use of CoBOL - An Inspector General Critique and the SSA's Reply

Downloads:
537
Added:
December 2nd 2013

An interesting exchange between the Inspector General's office on the Social Security Agency's use of CoBOL, its increasing use of Java, and its modernization efforts.  The facts presented as context are as important as the recommendations and conclusions, and underscore the importance of CoBOL to the financial industry. Also interesting is how the SSA's annual budget of $100M for operation and maintance for 60 million lines of code of CoBOL compares fa…

2012-2016 Social Security Agency Strategic Plan for IT Emphasizes Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Downloads:
472
Added:
December 2nd 2013

Why does the Social Security Agency embrace Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a key component of its IT strategy through 2016? It is because "SOA is an IT architectural approach that makes use of reusable components or services...Our WebSphere/CICS model supports WebSphere application design and its interface with CICS, allowing us to leverage decades of proven, optimized software while modernizing the user interfaces from outdated 'green screens'…

2012-2016 Social Security Agency Strategic Plan for IT Includes CoBOL

Downloads:
485
Added:
December 2nd 2013

Why does the Social Security Agency continue to embrace  CoBOL? In its 2012-2016 Strategic Plan, it states:
"COBOL has served SSA and similar large transactional processing organizations well for over 40 years; COBOL's longevity is a distinct advantage for us, given the support and stability of the product."

Quotes

"If you are going through hell, keep going.", Winston Churchhill
Member