An approach to software maintenance support using a syntactic source code analyser data base : this thesis is presented in a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Computer Science at Massey University

In this thesis, the development of a software maintenance tool called a syntactic source code analyser (SSCA) is summarised. An SSCA supports other maintenance tools which interact with source code by creating a data base of source information which has links to a formatted version of program source code. The particular SSCA presented handles programs written in a version of COBOL. Before developing a SSCA system, aspects of software maintenance need to be considered. Hence, the scope, definitions and problems of maintenance activities are briefly reviewed and maintenance support through environments, software metrics, and specific tools and techniques examined. A complete maintenance support environment for an application is found to overlap considerably with the application documentation system and shares some tools with development environments. Program source code is also identified as the fundamental documentation of an application and interaction with this source code is a requirement of many maintenance support tools

Using automated source code analysis for software evolution

Software maintenance is one of the most expensive and time-consuming phases in the software life-cycle. The size and complexity of commercial applications probably present the greatest difficulty that maintainers face when making changes to their applications. As a result of the corresponding loss of understanding, business knowledge encapsulated within the system becomes fragmented, and any changes made as a result of new business initiatives become difficult to implement and hence may mean a loss of business opportunities. This paper outlines an approach to regaining understanding of software which has been used in the Release project at Durham University. This approach involves determining the calling structure of a program in terms of a call-graph, and from this call-graph extracting a dominance tree. Various problems which have been encountered during the construction of tools to perform this task are described

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace-vehicle Design (IPAD) system. Volume 6: Implementation schedule, development costs, operational costs, benefit assessment, impact on company organization, spin-off assessment, phase 1, tasks 3 to 8

A baseline implementation plan, including alternative implementation approaches for critical software elements and variants to the plan, was developed. The basic philosophy was aimed at: (1) a progressive release of capability for three major computing systems, (2) an end product that was a working tool, (3) giving participation to industry, government agencies, and universities, and (4) emphasizing the development of critical elements of the IPAD framework software. The results of these tasks indicate an IPAD first release capability 45 months after go-ahead, a five year total implementation schedule, and a total developmental cost of 2027 man-months and 1074 computer hours. Several areas of operational cost increases were identified mainly due to the impact of additional equipment needed and additional computer overhead. The benefits of an IPAD system were related mainly to potential savings in engineering man-hours, reduction of design-cycle calendar time, and indirect upgrading of product quality and performance

An overview of decision table literature 1982-1995.

This report gives an overview of the literature on decision tables over the past 15 years. As much as possible, for each reference, an author supplied abstract, a number of keywords and a classification are provided. In some cases own comments are added. The purpose of these comments is to show where, how and why decision tables are used. The literature is classified according to application area, theoretical versus practical character, year of publication, country or origin (not necessarily country of publication) and the language of the document. After a description of the scope of the interview, classification results and the classification by topic are presented. The main body of the paper is the ordered list of publications with abstract, classification and comments.

Getting Relational Database from Legacy Data-MDRE Approach

The previous management information systems turning on traditional mainframe environment are often written in COBOL and store their data in files; they are usually large and complex and known as legacy systems. These legacy systems need to be maintained and evolved due to several causes, including correction of anomalies, requirements change, management rules change, new reorganization, etc. But, the maintenance of legacy systems becomes over years extremely complex and highly expensive, In this case, a new or an improved system must replace the previous one. However, replacing those systems completely from scratch is also very expensive and it represents a huge risk. Nevertheless, they should be evolved by profiting from the valuable knowledge embedded in them. This paper proposes a reverse engineering process based on Model Driven engineering that presents a solution to provide a normalized relational database which includes the integrity constraints extracted from legacy data. A CASE tool CETL: (COBOL Extract Transform Load) is developed to support the proposal. Keywords: legacy data, reverse engineering, model driven engineering, COBOL metamodel, domain class diagram, relational database

Software maintenance: redocumentation of existing Cobol systems using hypertext technology

One of the major problems associated with the maintenance of existing software systems is their lack of documentation. This can make very large, poorly structured programs very difficult to maintain. Nearly all traditional documentation tools are either designed for use in the development stage of the software lifecycle or are report generators such as cross reference generators. The problems of lack of documentation are compounded when applied to third party software maintenance as the staffs are often initially unfamiliar with the code they are maintaining. This thesis describes these problems in detail and evaluates the feasibility of a tool to help with redocumentation based on current hypertext technology

A methodology for producing reliable software, volume 1

An investigation into the areas having an impact on producing reliable software including automated verification tools, software modeling, testing techniques, structured programming, and management techniques is presented. This final report contains the results of this investigation, analysis of each technique, and the definition of a methodology for producing reliable software

Migrating a Large Scale Legacy Application to SOA: Challenges and Lessons Learned

Abstract—This paper presents the findings of a case study of a large scale legacy to service-oriented architecture migration process in the payments domain of a Dutch bank. The paper presents the business drivers that initiated the migration, and describes a 4-phase migration process. For each phase, the paper details benefits of using the techniques, best practices that contribute to the success, and possible challenges that are faced during migration. Based on these observations, the findings are discussed as lessons learned, including the implications of using reverse engineering techniques to facilitate the migration process, adopting a pragmatic migration realization approach, emphasizing the organizational and business perspectives, and harvesting knowledge of the system throughout the system’s life cycle. I

The impacts and benefits of using CASE tools in the system development life cycle

The basic idea underlying computer-aided software engineering (CASE) technology is to increase a systems developer\u27s productivity by providing a set of well-integrated, labor-saving tools that transform computer-based information systems (CBIS) development into an automated process. Two major issues of interest are addressed by this article. The first issue includes subjects related to the corporate data processing environment when adopting CASE technology for developing CBIS applications. The second issue includes subjects related to examining the impacts and benefits of using CASE technology as an automated development CBIS application tool within the system development life cycle