1996 Reports

Incremental Process Support for Code Reengineering: An Update (Experience Report)

Kaiser, Gail E.; Heineman, George T.; Skopp, Peter D.; Yang, Jack Jingshuang

Componentization is an important, emerging approach to software modernization whereby a stovepipe system is restructured into components that can be reused in other systems.More significantly from the system maintenance perspective, selected components in the original system can be completely replaced, e.g.,the database or user interface. In some cases, a new architecture can be developed, for example to convert a monolithic system to the client/server paradigm, and the old components plugged into place along with some new ones. We update a 1994 publication in this conference series, where we proposed using process modeling and enactment technology to support both construction of systems from components and re-engineering of systems to permit component replacement. This paper describes our experience following that approach through two generations of component-oriented process models.