User interface configured to display mechanical fabric and semantic model of a legacy computer application generated, graphical view navigating links between mechanical nodes and semantic nodes based on relevant business rules

• US 7,672,957 B2
• Filed: 02/12/2007
• Issued: 03/02/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/10/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NTT DATA Canada, Inc. (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation)
• Original Assignee: MAKE Technologies, Inc. (Dell Technologies Inc.)
• Inventors: Cotichini, Christian G., Jongkind, Yonas
• Primary Examiner(s): Channavajjala; Srirama
• Application Number:
  US11/674,047
• Publication Number:
  US 20070245320A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,114 Days
• Field of Search: 707 1- 2, 707/100, 707/102, 707/103.R, 707/103.Y, 707/103.Z, 717100-102, 717120-121, 717/143, 717/108, 717/165, 717/104, 717/116, 715205-208, 715234-236, 715/239, 715/713, 715762-763, 715/854
• US Class Current: 707/794
• 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 executed on one or more computing devices and configured to transform a legacy computer application into a new computer application, the software transformation system comprising:

a business asset extraction sub-system configured to receive as input data representing the legacy computer application, the business asset extraction sub-system comprising;

a mechanical model formation tool configured to;

scan the legacy computer application to identify mechanical assets of the legacy computer application, including one or more of system interface objects, computer programs, data access points, and a physical data model configured to store data records utilized by the legacy computer application;

parse the legacy computer application into identifiable segments; and

during the parsing, tag mechanical assets of the legacy computer application with associated meta language identifier information;

assign mechanical nodes to the tagged mechanical assets based on the meta language identifier information;

linking the mechanical nodes to create a mechanical fabric representing computer-implemented operations of the legacy computer application;

wherein the mechanical fabric includes a network of mechanical nodes, each mechanical node being placed at a tagged mechanical asset, and associations between the mechanical nodes;

a semantic model formation tool configured to;

identify as semantic assets a plurality of steps of a use case of a business process according to which a user interacts with the legacy computer application, the steps including one or more observable system interactions during which the user interacts with respective system interface objects of the mechanical fabric;

parse the semantic assets; and

during the parsing, tag each semantic asset with associated meta language identifier information;

assign semantic nodes to the tagged semantic assets based on the associated meta language identifier information;

linking the semantic asset nodes to create a semantic model representing operator-perceived meanings attached to interactions with the legacy application, wherein the semantic model includes a network of semantic nodes, each semantic node being placed at a tagged semantic asset, and associations between the semantic nodes;

an ontological linking tool configured to create links between related mechanical nodes and semantic nodes, based on the meta language identifier information associated with each of the mechanical nodes and semantic nodes, at least some of the links being between mechanical nodes that represent system interface objects and semantic nodes that represent observable system interactions with corresponding system interface objects; and

an asset-specific graphical generator to generate a graphical view of the links identified by the ontological linking tool as being between related mechanical nodes created by the mechanical model formation tool and semantic nodes created by the semantic model formation tool;

a modernization and streamlining sub-system configured to process output of the business asset extraction sub-system to remove obsolete business rules from the collection of business rules to produce a collection of relevant business rules; and

a model and standards development sub-system configured to process output of the modernization and streamlining sub-system to output a new computer application based on the collection of relevant business rules.

2. The software transformation system of claim 1, wherein the mechanical fabric is generated using a programming meta-language generator.

3. The software transformation system of claim 2, wherein the meta-language generator includes an extended single static assignment (XSA) generator.

4. The software transformation system of claim 1, wherein the graphical generator includes an extensible stylesheet language transformation (XSLT) generator.

5. The software transformation system of claim 1, wherein the graphical view is linked in HTML format, and is configured to be navigated by a user via a browser.

6. A software transformation system executed on one or more computing devices and configured to transform a legacy computer application into a new computer application, the 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 generated by an asset-specific graphical generator to generate a graphical view of links between related mechanical nodes within the mechanical fabric and semantic nodes included in the semantic model, the user interface including controls for navigating to the mechanical nodes within the mechanical fabric and to the semantic nodes within semantic model, and for navigating between the mechanical nodes within the mechanical fabric and the semantic nodes within the semantic model along the links formed therebetween, the controls being configured to enable selection of at least one of the mechanical and semantic nodes to display information about that selected node which exposes one or more business rules that govern operation of the legacy computer application, where the mechanical nodes and the links between related mechanical nodes represent one or more of a system interface object, a computer program, a data access point, and a physical data model configured to store data records utilized by the legacy computer application;

a modernization and streamlining sub-system configured to receive a collection of business rules identified through the selection of the mechanical and semantic nodes via the user interface and process the collection of business rules to remove obsolete business rules and thereby produce a collection of relevant business rules; and

a model and standards development sub-system configured to process output of the modernization and streamlining sub-system to produce and output a new computer application based on the collection of relevant business rules.

7. The software transformation system of claim 6, wherein the links are represented in HTML format.

8. A computer-executable transformation program executed on one or more computing devices, comprising:

a mechanical fabric data architecture configured to represent a legacy computer application, the mechanical fabric comprising;

a plurality of mechanical nodes interlinked by associations between the mechanical nodes, wherein respective mechanical 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;

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 semantic nodes interlinked by associations between the semantic nodes, wherein respective semantic 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 interactions being associatable with one or more of the use cases;

the legacy application; and

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

a user interface configured to display at least a portion of a semantic fabric of the legacy computer application generated by an asset-specific graphical generator to generate a graphical view of links between related semantic nodes and the mechanical nodes, the user interface including controls for navigating to semantic nodes within the semantic model and to mechanical nodes in the mechanical model, and for navigating between the mechanical nodes and associated semantic nodes along the links formed therebetween, the controls being configured to enable selection of at least one of the semantic and mechanical nodes to display information about that selected node which exposes one or more business rules that govern operation of the legacy computer application.

9. A method of transforming a legacy computer application into a new computer application, the method being executable by one or more computing devices, comprising:

receiving the legacy computer application to be transformed at the one or more computer devices;

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 the computer programs access the data stored in the physical data model;

tagging the mechanical assets with semantic tags;

creating mechanical nodes from the tagged mechanical assets;

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;

tagging the semantic assets with semantic tags;

creating semantic nodes from the tagged semantic assets;

linking the mechanical nodes to create a mechanical fabric representing computer-implemented operations of the legacy computer application and linking the semantic nodes to create a semantic model representing the human interaction with the legacy computer application, wherein mechanical nodes and semantic nodes having corresponding semantic tags are linked;

presenting a graphical user interface including controls for navigating to the mechanical nodes within the mechanical fabric and to the semantic nodes within semantic model, and for navigating between the mechanical nodes and the semantic nodes along the links formed therebetween, the controls being configured to enable selection of at least one of the mechanical and semantic nodes to display information about that selected node that exposes one or more business rules that govern operation of the legacy computer application;

identifying a collection of business rules that govern operation of the legacy computing application from the mechanical fabric and the semantic model, based on user input received via the graphical user interface;

removing obsolete business rules from the collection of business rules to produce a collection of relevant business rules; and

producing and outputting the new computer application based on the collection of relevant business rules identified from the mechanical fabric and the semantic model of the legacy computer application.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the semantic tags represent at least one of a field, variable, data structure, and input and output instruction category.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein the semantic tags are generated using resource description framework (RDF) file format.