Grupo Alarcos · Book chapter · 2011
Model-Driven Reengineering
Ignacio García Rodríguez de Guzmán, Mario Piattini Velthuis
Legacy information systems entail a risk for companies because, on the one hand, they cannot be thrown away since valuable business knowledge becomes embedded in them over time, and on the other hand, they cannot be easily maintained at a moderate cost. Over the last two decades, reengineering has been the solution to these problems, since it supports the evolutionary maintenance of legacy information systems whilst simultaneously preserving the knowledge embedded within them. Unfortunately, traditional reengineering is facing new challenges concerning its formalization and automation as a consequence of legacy information systems being increasingly larger and more complex. A new software engineering approach known as Model-Driven Reengineering has consequently emerged to deal with these limitations. Model-Driven Reengineering does not replace traditional reengineering, but incorporates the model-driven development principles; i.e., this approach treats all software artifacts as models and establishes transformations between these models at different degrees of abstraction. The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of the emerging concepts and standards related to Model-Driven Reengineering. This chapter also discusses how Model-Driven Reengineering deals with typical challenges that emerge when LISs are evolved, in order to mitigate the negative effects of the software erosion phenomenon, preserve the embedded business knowledge, and reduce maintenance costs.