Planning the reengineering of legacy systems

How can you know if reengineering is cost-effective? If it is preferable to new development? Or to maintaining the status quo? The author proposes a way to quantify the costs and prove the benefits of reengineering over other alternatives and offers some advice on contracting a reengineering project     

Encapsulation of legacy software: A technique for reusing legacy software components

The following paper reviews the possibilities of encapsulating existing legacy software for reuse in new distributed architectures. It suggests wrapping as an alternative strategy to reengineering and redevelopment. It then defines the levels of granularity at which software can be encapsulated before going on to describe how to construct a wrapper and how to adapt host programs for wrapping. Some wrapping products are discussed and the state of the art summarized. The advantage of wrapping over conventional reengineering is the low cost and even lower risks involved. This is the driving force in the search for improved wrapping technology. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A pilot project for migrating COBOL code to web services

This paper describes a pilot project conducted to test the feasibility of constructing web services from existing mainframe COBOL programs. The project involved the use of four tools. The first tool, COBAudit, was intended to identify candidates for web services. The second tool, COBStrip, served to extract only that portion of the code required to fulfill the service. The third tool, COBWrap, wrapped the code extracted from original code and converted it to an executable component. The fourth tool, COBLink, connected the wrapped component to the web by generating a WSDL interface from either the COBOL linkage section or the original map definition. The tools were applied to a legacy life insurance system with more than 20 million lines of COBOL code running under IMS on the IBM mainframe.     

Postmortem distribution of nicotine and cotinine from a case involving the simultaneous administration of multiple nicotine transdermal systems

A 31-year-old female was found dead with 18 nicotine transdermal system patches taped to her upper body and a plastic bag taped over her nose and mouth (the cause of death was ruled asphyxiation). Nicotine concentrations in biological fluids and tissues were analyzed using a liquid-liquid extraction followed by injection onto and HP-5890 gas chromatograph (GC) equipped with a nitrogen-phosphorus detector. Cotinine was separated from the biological matrices using solid-phase extraction followed by analysis on an HP-5890 GC with flame ionization detection. A variety of specimens were analyzed, including blood, urine, vitreous, brain, liver, and gastric contents. Heart and femoral blood concentrations (1.4 and 0.46 micrograms/mL, respectively) were 175 and 57 times, respectively, the mean C(max) value reported following the proper administration of a single 7-mg/day patch.     

Factors influencing survival after gamma knife radiosurgery for patients with single and multiple brain metastases

BACKGROUND: Significant changes are restructurng the U.S. health care delivery system. National health reform is now extending itself into the public sector. Increased health and medical costs by federal and state governments are forcing a reevaluation of major entitlement programs, especially Medicaid. METHODS/RESULTS: Because Medicaid is the single largest item in many state budgets, states are now enrolling Medicaid patients into managed and coordinated care arrangements as a means to control costs and increase access to care. HMOs are not only competing for private patients but also actively seeking the Medicaid population. Nationally, almost one-fourth of all Medicaid patients are now enrolled in managed care plans. Various models and approaches have been developed by individual states. CONCLUSIONS: Because managed care enrollment in the Medicaid program has increased substantially in recent years, selected services including vision care are no longer rendered by any practitioner willing to accept Medicaid fees. Freedom of choice is now restricted to pre-selected and panel practitioners participating with the managed care program. The rules, regulations, billing procedures, fees, and program requisites will differ under managed care programs. Private optometric practitioners must consider entering economic and organizational relationships and linkages that make them attractive to managed care organizations.     

Software Renewal: A case Study

Error-free software in large applications may be possible only by respecifying the original design-and may be affordable only when automatic tools become available.     

Rationing organs using psychosocial and lifestyle criteria

The decrease in responsiveness of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) system is marked over the first months of life. Seventy-eight healthy infants (44 girls), 7 to 15 weeks old, were given a laboratory mock physical examination. Salivary cortisol samples were collected pre- and postexamination and at home. Behavioral state during the examination and home sleep/wake activity were measured. Subjects younger than 11 weeks showed an increase in pre- to postexamination cortisol, while older subjects did not. Further, there was no decrease in behavioral distress to the examination with age. Infants who showed an early- morning peak (EMP) in home cortisol levels were significantly older and were likely to be those who slept through the night. However, the presence of an EMP was not associated with a lack of cortisol response to the examination. The decrease in cortisol responsiveness witnessed around the age of 3 months is presumably due to other processes associated with age, and not with the expression of the day-night rhythm in basal cortisol.     

Influence of four retail food service cooling methods on the behavior of Clostridium perfringens ATCC 10388 in turkey roasts following heating to an internal temperature of 74 degrees C

The influence of four food service cooling methods (CM) on growth of Clostridium perfringens ATCC 10388 in cooked turkey roasts was evaluated. Raw whole turkey roasts were inoculated with C. perfringens spores (approximately 4.23 log CFU per roast), vacuum packaged, and heated to an internal temperature of 74 degrees C. The cooked roasts were cooled as follows: whole roast cut into four quarters and held at 4 degrees C (CM1); whole roast held in a blast chiller (CM2); whole roast loosely wrapped and held at 4 degrees C (CM3); and whole roasts (three per bag) held at 4 degrees C (CM4). The roasts were analyzed for C. perfringens using Shahidi-Ferguson perfringens agar and anaerobic incubation (37 degrees C, 24 h). None of the cooling methods met the amended 2001 U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food Code guidelines for safe cooling of potentially hazardous foods. Times taken for roasts to cool from 57 to 21 degrees C using CM1, CM2, CM3, and CM4 were 2.27, 3.11, 6.22, and 8.71 h, respectively. Times taken for roasts (21 degrees C) to reach 5 degrees C ranged from 6.33 (CM1) to 19.45 h (CM4). Based on initial numbers of C. perfringens, no growth occurred in roasts cooled by CM1 or CM2, whereas numbers increased by 1.5 and 4.0 log in whole roasts cooled via CM3 and CM4, respectively. These findings indicate that certain food service cooling methods for whole cooked turkey roasts may result in proliferation of C. perfringens and increase the risk of foodborne illness by this pathogen.