Iterative reengineering of legacy systems

During its life, a legacy system is subjected to many maintenance activities, which cause degradation of the quality of the system: When this degradation exceeds a critical threshold, the legacy system needs to be reengineered. In order to preserve the asset represented by the legacy system, the fam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on software engineering 2003-03, Vol.29 (3), p.225-241
Main Authors: Bianchi, A., Caivano, D., Marengo, V., Visaggio, G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aging
Business process re-engineering
Case studies
Computer programs
Computer Society
Continuity
Degradation
Legacy
Legacy systems
Maintenance
Mathematical models
Preserves
Q factor
Reengineering
Software
Software engineering
Software maintenance
Software quality
Software systems
Studies
Systems development
Vehicles
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Summary:During its life, a legacy system is subjected to many maintenance activities, which cause degradation of the quality of the system: When this degradation exceeds a critical threshold, the legacy system needs to be reengineered. In order to preserve the asset represented by the legacy system, the familiarity with it gained by the system's maintainers and users, and the continuity of execution of current operations during the reengineering process, the system needs to be reengineered gradually. Moreover, each program needs to be reengineered within a short period of time. The paper proposes a reengineering process model, which is applied to an in-use legacy system to confirm that the process satisfies previous requirements and to measure its effectiveness. The reengineered system replaced the legacy one to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders; the reengineering process also had a satisfactory impact on the quality of the system. Finally, this paper contributes to validate the cause-effect relationship between the reengineering process and overcoming the aging symptoms of a software system.
ISSN:0098-5589
1939-3520
DOI:10.1109/TSE.2003.1183932