Extracting Executable Architecture From Legacy Code Using Static Reverse Engineering
Rehman Arshad, Kung-Kiu Lau · Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) · 2017
Static reverse engineering techniques are based on structural information of the code. They work by building a model of abstraction that considers control structures in the code in order to extract some high-level notation. So far, most of these techniques produce abstraction models or feature locations but not the executable architecture that can transform the legacy code into modern paradigm of programming. Few approaches that extract architectural notation either require the code to be in component based orientation or lack automation. This paper presents an ongoing research that can extract executable architecture as X-MAN components from legacy code. The extracted components can be integrated with other systems due to re-usability of the X-MAN component model. This approach neither requires the source code to be in component based orientation nor it lacks automation.