A framework for object-oriented reverse engineering of legacy information systems

There is every indication that an object-oriented view of an information system is a solid foundation for understanding its legacy organization, for relating it to the environment in which it is embedded and for guiding its reengineering. In this paper we present a framework based upon the formal object-oriented specification language TROLL, which provides an object-oriented view of legacy information systems. The aim is to combine existing methods and keep results in a common and suitable description base which provides the appropriate form for deriving object specifications from the legacy IS. We use the language TROLL not only as description language, but also as a framework to support the maintenance engineers in their reverse engineering tasks by giving hints about what to do next to complete the object specifications. The result of the approach is a formal object-oriented specification of the legacy IS that is suitable both for developing a new IS or for reengineering the legacy system.