Identifying objects in legacy systems

Many organisations are migrating towards object-oriented technology. However, owing to the business value of legacy software, new object-oriented development has to be weighed against salvaging strategies. The incremental migration of procedurally oriented systems to object-oriented platforms seems to be a feasible approach, although it must be considered as risky as redevelopment. This uses reverse engineering activities to abstract an object-oriented model from legacy code. The paper presents a method for decomposing legacy systems into objects. The identi®cation of objects is centred around persistent data stores, such as ®les or tables in the database, while programs and routines are candidates for implementing the object methods. Associating the methods to the objects is achieved by optimising selected object-oriented design metrics. The rationale behind this choice is that the object-oriented decomposition of a legacy system should not result in a poor design, as this would ma...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: IWPC
• Authors: Aniello Cimitile, Andrea De Lucia, Giuseppe A. Di Lucca, Anna Rita Fasolino
• Keywords: IWPC 1997, Legacy System, Object-oriented, Object-oriented Technology, Software Engineering