Graph-based tools for re-engineering

  • Authors:

  • Katja Cremer;André Marburger;Bernhard Westfechtel

  • Affiliations:

  • Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH, Ericsson Allee 1, D-52134 Herzogenrath, Germany;Informatik III, RWTH Aachen, D-52056 Aachen, Germany;Informatik III, RWTH Aachen, D-52056 Aachen, Germany

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Software Maintenance: Research and Practice
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Maintenance of legacy systems is a challenging task. Often, only the source code is still available, while design or requirements documents have been lost or have not been kept up-to-date with the actual implementation. In particular, this applies to many business applications which are run on a mainframe computer and are written in COBOL. Many companies are confronted with the difficult task of migrating these systems to a client/server architecture with clients running on PCs and servers running on the mainframe. REforDI (REengineering for DIstribution) is a graph-based environment supporting this task. REforDI provides integrated code analysis, re-design, and code transformation for COBOL applications. To prepare the application for distribution, REforDI assists in the transition to an object-based architecture, according to which the source code is subsequently transformed into Object COBOL. Internally, REforDI makes heavy use of generators to reduce the implementation effort and thus to enhance adaptability. In particular, graph-based tools for re-engineering are generated from a formal specification which is based on programmed graph transformations.