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Presenter: Ying Zou - Software Engineering Group, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo
Supervisor: Dr. R. Nigel Horspool, Chair, Computer Science Department

Date: Mon, April 14, 2003
Time: 13:30:00 - 14:30:00
Place: Engineering Office Wing Building (EOW), Room #430

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT:

In the context of software maintenance, legacy software systems are continuously re-engineered to correct errors, provide new functionality, or to port them into modern platforms. However, software re-engineering activities should not occur in a vacuum, and it is important to incorporate specific non-functional requirements for the migrant system in the re-engineering process. In this respect, the re-engineering process is fine-tuned so that the migrated system may be required to conform to specific target objectives, such as better performance and higher maintainability.

This talk presents a comprehensive software migration framework to monitor and evaluate software qualities at each step of the re-engineering process. The process is considered as a sequence of transformations that alter system states. The initial state corresponds to the original system and the final state corresponds to the target migrant system. To incorporate quality requirements in the migration process, each state is specified by a set of properties related to one or more target qualities(i.e. performance, maintainability, reusability) and is denoted by feature vectors. The association of source code features with software quality requirements is achieved by the use of soft-goal interdependency graphs. In this context, each transformation is associated with the likelihood that it contributes towards the desired quality. Thus, transformations are selected based on the likelihood that the new system will conform to the target requirements. The research addresses three major issues namely, the identification of a comprehensive set of possible transformation rules for migrating procedural system to object oriented platforms, the association of source code features with specific target qualities, and the design of an algorithmic process that aims to identify an optimal sequence of transformations to yield a target system that conforms to the desired qualities. Further, a porting technique is presented to integrate the legacy components in the Web enable environment.

Note: Ms. Ying Zou is a candidate for a faculty position in the Department of Computer Science.