Legacy Software Modernization System

• US 20070245320A1
• Filed: 02/12/2007
• Published: 10/18/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/10/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NTT DATA Canada, Inc. (NTT DATA Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: MAKE Technologies, Inc. (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Cotichini, Christian, Jongkind, Yonas
• Granted Patent: US 7,672,957 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/136
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/74 Reverse engineering; Extracting design information from source code
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/944 Business related

Abstract

According to one aspect of the invention, a software transformation system is provided that may include a business asset extraction sub-system. The business asset extraction sub-system is typically configured to analyze a legacy computer application and create a mechanical fabric representing computer-implemented operations of the legacy computer application, and to create a semantic model representing operator-perceived meanings attached to interactions with the legacy application. The business asset extraction sub-system is further typically configured to create links between related portions of the mechanical fabric and the semantic model. The mechanical fabric comprises a network of nodes and associations between nodes, the nodes and associations representing one or more system interface objects, computer programs, and data access points, and a physical data model configured to store data records utilized by the legacy computer application.

Claims

1. A software transformation system, comprising:

a business asset extraction sub-system configured to analyze a legacy computer application and create a mechanical fabric representing computer-implemented operations of the legacy computer application, and to create a semantic model representing operator-perceived meanings attached to interactions with the legacy application;

wherein the business asset extraction sub-system is further configured to create links between related portions of the mechanical fabric and the semantic model.

2. The software modernization system of claim 1, wherein the mechanical fabric comprises a network of nodes and associations between nodes, the nodes and associations representing one or more system interface objects, computer programs, and data access points, and a physical data model configured to store data records utilized by the legacy computer application.

3. The software modernization system of claim 2, wherein the mechanical fabric is generated using a programming meta-language generator.

4. The software modernization system of claim 3, wherein the meta-language generator includes an extended single static assignment (XSA) generator.

5. The software modernization system of claim 2, further comprising an asset specific graphical generator to generate a graphical view of the links between related portions of the mechanical fabric and the semantic model.

6. The software modernization system of claim 5, wherein the graphical generator includes an extensible stylesheet language transformation (XSLT) generator.

7. The software modernization system of claim 5, wherein the graphical view is linked in HTML format, and is configured to be navigated by a user via a browser.

8. A software transformation system, comprising:

a computer-executable transformation program including a user interface configured to display at least a portion of a mechanical fabric and a semantic model of a legacy computer application, the user interface including controls for navigating to locations within the mechanical fabric and the semantic model, and for navigating between the mechanical fabric and the semantic model along links formed therebetween.

9. The software modernization system of claim 8, wherein the links are represented in HTML format.

10. A mechanical fabric data architecture configured to represent a legacy computer application, the mechanical fabric comprising:

a plurality of nodes interlinked by associations between the nodes, wherein respective nodes are configured to represent;

a portion of code within a computer program;

a system interface object implemented by the computer program;

data stored within a physical data model; and

data access points interlinking the computer program and the physical data model.

11. The mechanical fabric architecture of claim 10, further comprising an asset specific graphical generator to generate a graphical view of the mechanical fabric.

12. The mechanical fabric architecture of claim 11, wherein the graphical generator is an extensible stylesheet language transformation (XSLT) generator.

13. The mechanical fabric architecture of claim 11, wherein the graphical view is in HTML format.

14. A semantic model data architecture configured to represent operator-perceived meanings attached to human interactions with the legacy computer application, the semantic model comprising:

a plurality of nodes interlinked by associations between the nodes, wherein respective nodes are configured to represent;

at least one business process of an enterprise;

use cases for each discrete task within the business process;

observable system interactions with the legacy application, by which operators interact with the legacy computer application, the observable system objects being associatable with one or more use cases;

the legacy application; and

a logical domain model representing operator-perceived data processed by the legacy application.

15. A method of creating a mechanical fabric representing a legacy computer application, comprising:

parsing the legacy computer application to identify mechanical assets of the legacy computer application, the mechanical assets including computer programs, system interface objects of the computer programs via which human operators interact with the computer programs, a physical data model representing stored data within the legacy application, and data access points through which computer programs access data stored in the physical data model;

tagging the mechanical assets with semantic tags;

creating nodes from the tagged mechanical assets;

linking the nodes to create a mechanical fabric representing computer-implemented operations of the legacy computer application, which is navigable by a user along the links.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the semantic tags represent at least one of a field, variable, data structure, and input and output instruction category.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the semantic tags are generated using resource description framework (RDF) file format.

18. A method of creating a semantic model representing a legacy computer application, comprising:

identifying semantic assets representing human interaction with the legacy computer application, the semantic assets including business processes, use cases of the business processes, and observable system interactions corresponding to the use cases;

creating a plurality of nodes, each node representing a semantic asset and being tagged with a semantic tag;

linking the tagged nodes to thereby create a semantic model representing human interaction with the legacy computer application, which is navigable by a user along the links.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the semantic tags represent at least one of a field, variable, data structure, and input and output instruction category.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the semantic tags are generated using resource description framework (RDF) file format.