Legacy data |旧电脑资料库
So I did probably my most painful thing this month and looked at my credit card. I went through my transactions and then realised that one looked a bit amiss on the American Express statement.
I had a flight to and from Hong Kong, but the statement claimed that my flight went into Kai Tak airport. Which would be a bit hard since it has been closed since 1998. It reminded me of the continued power of mainframe computers. The travel industry and the banking sector both use giant computers to crunch data, much of the code on these computers has a heritage going back decades, but they provide a much more secure and reliable platforms than more ‘modern’ machines.
I can quite easily see what happened. Since Chep Lap Kok took over Kai Tak’s mantle as Hong Kong International Airport including its IATA and airline flight codes so apparent no updates were required in a database and Kai Tak airport got to live on as a piece of legacy data.