Recovering artifacts from legacy system using pattern matching

Modernizing legacy applications is the key issue facing IT managers today because there's enormous pressure on organizations to change the way they run their business to meet the new requirements. The importance of software maintenance and reengineering is forever increasing. Understanding the architecture of existing legacy applications is the most critical issue for maintenance and reengineering. The artifacts recovery can be facilitated with different recovery approaches, methods and tools. The existing methods provide static and dynamic set of techniques for extracting architectural information, but are not suitable for all users in different domains. This paper presents a simple and lightweight pattern extraction technique to extract different artifacts from legacy systems using regular expression pattern specifications with multiple language support. We used our custom-built tool DRT to recover artifacts from existing system at different levels of abstractions. In order to evaluate our approach a case study is conducted

Theoretical and practical implications of user interface patterns applied for the development of graphical user interfaces

We address current research concerning patterns dedicated to enable higher reusability during the automated development of GUI systems. User interface patterns are promising artifacts for improvements in this regard. Both general models for abstractions of graphical user interfaces and user interface pattern based concepts such as potential notations and model-based processes are considered. On that basis, the present limitations and potentials surrounding user interface patterns are to be investigated. We elaborate what theoretical implications emerge from user interface patterns applied for reuse and automation within user interface transformation steps. For this purpose, formal descriptions of user interface patterns are necessary. We analyze the capabilities of the mature XML-based user interface description languages UIML and UsiXML to express user interface patterns. Additionally, we experimentally investigate and analyze strengths and weaknesses of two general transformation approaches to derive practical implications of user interface patterns. As a result, we develop suggestions on how to apply positive effects of user interface patterns for the development of pattern-based graphical user interfaces

Dagstuhl-Manifest zur Strategischen Bedeutung des Software Engineering in Deutschland

Im Rahmen des Dagstuhl Perspektiven Workshop 05402 "Challenges for Software Engineering Research" haben führende Software Engineering Professoren den derzeitigen Stand der Softwaretechnik in Deutschland charakterisiert und Handlungsempfehlungen für Wirtschaft, Forschung und Politik abgeleitet. Das Manifest fasst die diese Empfehlungen und die Bedeutung und Entwicklung des Fachgebiets prägnant zusammen

Evaluation of design pattern recovery tools

Design pattern recovery approaches are assisted by different tools which recognize patterns from source code of legacy applications. Several tools are presented in related work, but little attention is paid on the evaluation of tools due to the unavailability of standard benchmarks and frameworks. Different pattern recovery tools extract different results from the same examined systems. The causes for disparity of results and ignorance for cross validation of results by different tools is still not thoroughly investigated. In this paper, we review existing design pattern recovery tools based on their available features and compare them regarding limitations of different tools. We recommend guidelines based on our observation and on the evaluation of different tools which can be used for comparing features of existing tools and developing new design pattern recovery tools

Towards Validation And Refinement Of Rule-Based Systems

A methodology for the validation of rule-based expert systems is presented as a multi-step process that has three central themes: (1) creation of a useful set of test inputs that cover the domain; (2) a methodology that evaluates the system\u27s responses to the test inputs and compares it to the responses of a panel of human experts; and (3) use of the validation results for system refinement. The presented methodology is performed in a loop. The starting point is a rule base and the loop ends up in a (hopefully) better rule base. The first three steps of this process have been published as separate issues in earlier papers by the authors. Here, these issues are just outlined and references are provided for detailed information. This paper gives an overview of the entire process and describes the relation between its steps. The last step, system refinement, is the new scientific issue here and thus, presented in more detail. Here, the rules are modified according to the results of evaluating the test cases. The base of this rule base reconstruction is both a \u27rule-associated validity\u27 and the existence of a \u27better rated\u27 human solution. © 2000 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Design Pattern Recovery in Architectures for Supporting Product Line Development and Application

Product lines can improve the efficiency of software development