There are proper ways of doing this: you run the old system in parallel with the new system and you outfit <i>both</i> systems in such a way that all writes are done on both systems. That way the DBs stay in sync.<p>So you won&#x27;t have to &#x27;write your code to continue saving some bizarre unnecessary data in the database&#x27; and you can have your &#x27;sensible scheme&#x27;. It just takes a little bit more care and planning.<p>&gt; As for the other comment, were they supposed to continue renting out completely unused facilities in case someone came along who thought the old system was better?<p>They ended up renting a good part of those facilities anyway, the problem was not the money but the fact that certain comms lines had been torn up.<p>Playing cowboy with critical company data is not a winning strategy.