Project Description Summary, December 1997
IBM-CSER Project

From Legacy Code to Modern Architecture

Executive summary

The project currently proceeds in two main directions. The first direction focuses on the design and development of an infrastructure that supports the software bookshelf. The software bookshelf is an environment where different software related artifacts (source code, documentation, architectural descriptions) can be stored and retrieved efficiently using WWW related technology. Issues in this line of research involve modeling and knowledge representation, tool integration, search techniques as well as pattern matching techniques applied to software re-engineering.

The second line of research involves the design and development of a software migration tool-set that allows for the analysis and transformation of procedural systems to Object Oriented architectures. The system that is migrated is a legacy IBM PL/I system. Research issues in this part of the project involve program representation and analysis, program transformation methods, identification of object oriented structures in procedural systems and, object wrapping technology. A spin-off from this part of the project is an upcoming project funded by the IRIS Network of Centers of Excellence having as a main theme the "Migration of Legacy Systems to Network Centric Environments". The IRIS project will start in April 1998, with an expected duration of 4 years.

The results of the IBM-CSER Project are not only being disseminated within IBM and CSER project members but also at the participating universities as well as conferences. Over the past year the principal investigators have developed tutorials, presented publications at conferences, and taught courses on the subject. Finally, the IBM-CSER Project exhibited four prototypes related to the software bookshelf and the migration tools at the CASCON-97 Tools Fair.

The University of Waterloo, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, is actively participating in the CSER consortium with a dedicated group of faculty and students (Software Engineering Group). Moreover, the group members currently pursue similar projects with IBM Canada, Nortel, Bell Canada, and OTI.

Recent Project Related, Presentations, Talks and, Demos.

[kalas97]

I. Kalas and H. Dayani-Fard; Software Architecture, CASCON'97 Tutorial and Workshop, (Toronto, Ontario, November 10-13, 1997).

[kerr97]

S. kerr; MIRROR: Meta-model Integration Repository for Reverse or Re-engineering., Invited Talk at Object Technology International Inc. (invitation by Dave Thomas), (Ottawa, Ontario, Dec. 5, 1997).

[Konto97]

K. Kontogiannis; Migration of Legacy Systems to Object Oriented and Network Centric Environments, Invited Talk on the Workshop on Network Centric Computing (STEP-97), (London, England, July 14-18 1997).

[Konto97]

K. Kontogiannis; Software Re-engineering, Practice and Research , Two day ICR short course, (Waterloo, Ontario, October 22-23, 1997).

[Mylo97]

J. Mylopoulos, K. Kontogiannis, Richard Gregory, Soheila Bashardoust; A PL/IX to C++ Software Transliteration System, CASCON'97 Demo, (Toronto, Ontario, November 10-13, 1997).

[Mylo97]

J. Mylopoulos, Scott Kerr; An Integrated and Reflexive Software Bookshelf Architecture, CASCON'97 Demo, (Toronto, Ontario, November 10-13, 1997).

[Mylo98a]

John Mylopoulos; Information Modeling in the Time of the Revolution; Keynote talk at the Eighth Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'98), Barcelona, Spain, June 17, 1998; to appear in Information Systems,, June 1998.

[Müller]

H. Müller, J. Mylopoulos; Year 2000, CASCON'97 Tutorial and Workshop, (Toronto, Ontario, November 10-13, 1997).

Contact Info

Last update of this page: December 23, 1997, by KK.