Developing Legacy System Migration Methods and Tools for Technology Transfer

This paper presents the research results of an ongoing technology transfer project carried out in coopera- tion between the University of Salerno and a small software company. The project is aimed at developing and transferring migration technology to the industrial partner. The partner should be enabled to migrate monolithic multi-user COBOL legacy systems to a multi-tier Web-based architecture. The assessment of the legacy systems of the partner company revealed that these systems had a very low level of decompos- ability with spaghetti-like code and embedded control flow and database accesses within the user interface descriptions. For this reason, it was decided to adopt an incremental migration strategy based on the reengineering of the user interface using Web technology, on the transformation of interactive legacy programs into batch programs, and the wrapping of the legacy programs. A middleware framework links the new Web-based user interface with the Wrapped Legacy System. An Eclipse plug-in, named MELIS (migration environment for legacy information systems), was also developed to support the migration process. Both the migration strategy and the tool have been applied to two essential subsystems of the most business critical legacy system of the partner company

Evaluating Legacy System Migration Technologies through Empirical Studies

We present two controlled experiments conducted with master students and practitioners and a case study conducted with practitioners to evaluate the use of MELIS (Migration Environment for Legacy Information Systems) for the migration of legacy COBOL programs to the web. MELIS has been developed as an Eclipse plug-in within a technology transfer project conducted with a small software company [16]. The partner company has developed and marketed in the last 30 years several COBOL systems that need to be migrated to the web, due to the increasing requests of the customers. The goal of the technology transfer project was to define a systematic migration strategy and the supporting tools to migrate these COBOL systems to the web and make the partner company an owner of the developed technology. The goal of the controlled experiments and case study was to evaluate the effectiveness of introducing MELIS in the partner company and compare it with traditional software development environments. The results of the overall experimentation show that the use of MELIS increases the productivity and reduces the gap between novice and expert software engineers

model driven reverse engineering approaches a systematic literature review

This paper explores and describes the state of the art for what concerns the model-driven approaches proposed in the literature to support reverse engineering. We conducted a systematic literature review on this topic with the aim to answer three research questions. We focus on various solutions developed for model-driven reverse engineering, outlining in particular the models they use and the transformations applied to the models. We also consider the tools used for model definition, extraction, and transformation and the level of automation reached by the available tools. The model-driven reverse engineering approaches are also analyzed based on various features such as genericity, extensibility, automation of the reverse engineering process, and coverage of the full or partial source artifacts. We describe in detail and compare fifteen approaches applying model-driven reverse engineering. Based on this analysis, we identify and indicate some hints on choosing a model-driven reverse engineering approach from the available ones, and we outline open issues concerning the model-driven reverse engineering approaches

Development of a model for the migration of legacy architectures

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Erstellung eines holistischen Modells für Migrationen von Alt(last)systemen in der IT. Dafür ist es notwendig zuerst festzustellen was sogenannte Legacy Systeme überhaupt ausmacht und welche Probleme diese mit sich bringen. Danach werden bestehende Migrationsarten und -vorgehensweisen erörtert und aufgezeigt welche Architekturen und Trends momentan auf dem Markt vorhanden sind. Um die im letzten Abschnitt der Arbeit vorgeschlagene Migrationsstrategie zu unterstützen werden Methoden zur Risikokontrolle, zur Einbeziehung von Stakeholdern und zur wirtschaftlichen Begründbarkeit eingeführt. Schließlich werden der Referenzprozess ReMiP und TOGAF als Framework für Enterprise Architecture vorgestellt und eine Kombination der beiden vorgeschlagen und in einem Referenzmodell beschrieben. Die erwarteten Vorteile durch die in dieser Arbeit diskutierte kombinierte Anwendung werden von einem externen Experten aus dem Arbeitsfeld von IT Migrationen nach ihrer Anwendbarkeit beurteilt.This paper is proposing a holistic process model for the migration of legacy infrastructures. To achieve this objective it is therefore necessary to investigate and define what legacy architectures and their related problems are. After that the established migration approaches to address the legacy challenge and an overview of current and ongoing architectures and trends form a broad enough headstone to then go on discussing which methodologies and means are available to facilitate a smooth migration. These are spanning from the human factor via risk control to economic matters related to system transformation projects. Finally the migration reference process ReMiP and the enterprise architecture framework TOGAF are introduced and combined to consolidate the presented approaches. The closing chapters compare the expected benefits with the requirements of a practitioner, propose a reference migration model and finally summarise the proposed approach

Migration d'interfaces utilisateurs textuelles de systèmes patrimoniaux vers le Web

Les interfaces utilisateurs détiennent une importance non négligeable dans tout logiciel applicatif, car elles constituent le premier contact entre les utilisateurs et le logiciel. La migration d'interfaces utilisateurs textuelles de systèmes patrimoniaux vers le Web vise à remédier les problèmes liés à l'accès limité de tels systèmes tout en améliorant l'aspect et la convivialité de ces interfaces. Fréquemment, cela implique à la fois le changement de la plate-forme d'exécution - d'une plate-forme textuelle vers une architecture Web - et la refonte complète des interfaces vers une technologie de présentation Web. Ce mémoire est une synthèse des méthodes et des techniques de migration d'interfaces utilisateurs textuelles vers le Web. Nous y abordons, dans un premier temps, les notions reliées aux systèmes patrimoniaux et au Web. Cela permet d'établir le contexte de notre étude à savoir l'environnement de départ et l'environnement cible dans une migration d'interfaces utilisateurs vers le Web. Dans un deuxième temps, nous exposons différentes techniques et approches de migration d'interfaces utilisateurs. Finalement, nous terminons notre présentation avec trois exemples de plates-formes de migration d'interfaces utilisateurs

MoDisco, a Model-Driven Platform to Support Real Legacy Modernization Use Cases

International audiencePresentation of a model-driven migration chain used by Sodifrance on its projects and of Eclipse/MoDisco platform a new model-driven framework to develop legacy modernization tools

A Framework for Next Generation Enterprise Application Integration

In addition to storing 70-75% of their data and business logic in legacy mainframe systems, global corporations have countless custom applications and off-the-shelf ERP products residing within their networks. Increasing competition and shrinking budgets have left managers scouring for innovative, cost-effective methods to maximize the potential of these enormous sunk costs. There is, as a result, an overwhelming need to not only web enable these existing legacy assets in order to quickly and cost-effectively deliver data to both customers and business partners alike, but also to amalgamate these disparate systems into a unified, homogeneous, real-time enterprise. Integration efforts to date, focused predominantly on the development of proprietary point-to-point adapters, have unfortunately proven to be a daunting task with countless failed projects and losses in the millions. The advent of XML web services does, however, have the potential to revolutionize existing integration strategies; the cost savings and ease of implementation associated with wrapping virtually all systems, past, present and future, with standardized, code-independent, data-centric interfaces is truly astounding. As the future success of this platform is, however, strictly dependent upon the interoperability of its endpoints, we have proposed several fundamental amendments to the existing flawed WSDL specification. A generic reference architecture, leveraging both this improved web services model as well as established component middleware technologies, is then proposed for the web enablement of legacy assets on an enterprise scale. In order to ensure the adoption of this methodology, a toolkit designed to automate the transformation has also been devised. This new paradigm will not only allow information to flow freely from deep within the enterprise, but will ultimately serve as the cornerstone of a new generation of enterprise integration solutions

MILAS : ModernIzing Legtacy Applications towards Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software as a Service (SaaS)

MILAS er om modernisering av gamle applikasjoner, og løfte dem opp til et SOA, SaaS nivå. MILAS beskriver en metodikk for hvordan dette kan best gjøres. Metodikken baserer seg på standarder og modelleringsmuligheter. MILAS dekker spesielt modellering av tjenester og hvordan en kan modellere tjeneser ut fra gamle komponeter

Design and implementation of a software agent platform applied in E-learning and course management

Text in English; Abstract: English and TurkishIncludes bibliographical references (leaves 86-89)xi, 115 leavesIn this thesis, we report an experience on constructing a software agent platform for development and implementation of software agent systems running with integrated e-learning and course management applications which are developed and running under different technologies. The proposed platform consists of an agent development framework namely JADE (Java Agent Development Environmet), a common database infrastructure serving to many different applications and the applications infrastructure running on different platforms. An example e-university application module which is an integrated course management software running on the proposed platform namely Course ON-LINE and an agent application running as an add-on utility to this application namely GAIA is explained in detail to demonstrate the use of the proposed application.Bu çalışmada farklı teknolojiler kullanılarak geliştirilen ve farklı platformlarda çalıştırılmakta olan ve tümleşik yapıdaki uzaktan eğtim ve ders yönetimi araçları uygulamalarla birlikte çalışabilecek yazılım etmen sistemlerinin geliştirilebilmesini sağlayan bir yazılım geliştirme ve çalıştırma ortamı inşa etme deneyimi aktarılmıştır. Önerilen ortam JADE (Java Agent Development Environmet), isimli bir etmen geliştirme aracı, etmen sistemleri dahil tüm uygulamaların ortak kullandıkları bir veritabanı altyapısı, ve farklı ortamlarda çalışan ve farklı teknolojilerle geliştirilmiş uygulamaların altyapısından oluşmaktadır. Önerilen ortamın kullanılışını göstermek için tümleşik ders web sayfaları yönetim aracı olan ve e-üniversite uygulamalarının bir parçası olan Course ON-LINE ve onunla birlikte çalışan bir yazılım etmeni uygulaması olan GAIA uygulamaları detaylıca sunulmuştur