service wrapping of legacy systems

Research efforts and commercial providers have proposed various approaches to address the pain points of legacy systems. However, the major problem remains: the identification of useful legacy functionality that can be exposed for collaborating applications at an optimal level of granularity. Additionally it is important to estimate and analyze the consequences of service-enablement decisions on the system-quality attributes (such as performance and maintainability) and the solution cost. In this regard, a systematic and comprehensive method to guide the transformation and integration of legacy applications with an enterprise-level architecture such as service-oriented architecture (SOA) is currently lacking. SOA using Web Services is gaining acceptance as the primary mechanism to interconnect disparate applications and ease interoperability between heterogeneous systems for internal as well as external integration. It promises improved business agility and reduced integration costs through increased interoperability and reuse of shared business services. One of the key obstacles to realizing this vision is the service enablement of existing legacy applications to collaborate in an enterprise-wide SOA. Over the past few years, significant advancements have been made to modernize and improve the interoperability of legacy systems.