Software Modernization: Technical Environment
Franck Barbier, Jean‐Luc Recoussine · 2015
In the literature on legacy systems, several words refer to the transition from outdated systems to newer ones: modernization, replacement, migration, renovation, recasting, revamping, etc. Software modernization may be understood with in a variable-geometry sense. There are effective techniques behind software modernization intentions: reverse engineering, forward engineering, etc. “Lightweight” is especially the case when one moves from an obsolete common business- oriented language (COBOL) dialect to a “modern” COBOL. Here, “modern” means that we guarantee that the generated COBOL code is actually surrounded by perennial (efficient) maintenance tools. Common (soft) cases are when organizations only want to move non-maintainable COBOL, a bottleneck, to something, which again becomes evolvable. Another use case is a COBOL-to-COBOL solution, which mostly consists of addressing architectural issues, i.e. moving the code from mainframes to platforms with distribution capabilities or, more frequently, adopting the Web three-tier application style.