Automated Software Modernization

ASM Technology:

From Basic Research to Industrialization

ASM Technology 1983 to Present: Much of the originating research for highly automated legacy system modernization technology originated from the Air Force-funded Knowledge Based Software Assistant (KBSA) transformation research program which commenced in 1983 and spanned a 15 year period ending in the mid-1990's. The focus of the KBSA program basic research was to develop highly automated transformation processes for program specification and synthesis. KBSA technologies were adapted by industry giants such as Boeing and Lockheed to support industrial software reverse-engineering and adaptive maintenance processes. Eventually the KBSA technology evolved into tools that could derive modern applications from old (legacy) applications with minimal manual intervention.

Perhaps the best example of ASM technologies is the JANUS™ tool and technology framework developed by The Software Revolution, Inc (TSRI), a Washington State-based business. TSRI is a leading provider of ASM services to government and industry customers. As a Platform Member of Object Management Group (OMG) Architecture Driven Modernization (ADM) Task Force TSRI was principal author of the OMG ADM TF RFP #2, the Abstract Syntax Tree (ASTM) Meta-Model Package and TSRI is a leading contributor to the definition of industry standards for interchanging AST models and meta-models to promote multi-vendor tool and service frameworks.

 

A Fully Model-Driven ASM Technology: TSRI’s JANUS™ technology suite of tools and services adhere to OMG ADMTF standards and recommended practices. JANUS™ is perhaps the best technology currently in existence to exemplify the ADM vision.The JANUS™ toolset from TSRI provides a fully model-driven approach for information system modernization. It is capable of providing documentation, transformation, re-factoring, and web-enablement of legacy applications with little or no manual intervention. TSRI's JANUS™ is used not only as the foundation for automated legacy system modernization services, it is also a self defining framework used for its own implemention and extension. JANUS™ solves the O(N-squared) language transformation combinatorial problem by means of the TSRI Intermediate Object Modeling (IOM) Language. And ASM processes for documentation, and re-factoring are reduced to O(1) problems consistently and uniformly solved within the IOM™. The IOM™ is a language-neutral model into which all legacy source languages are transformed, and from which modern object-oriented (OO) target languages are generated.

The IOM supports ASM as a unified rather than fragmented process. Changes to code are made by transformation rules. Errors attributable to manual editing and human mistakes are eliminated.

Multilingual ASM Framework: The transformation of source code is Multi-lingual with respect to both the legacy and target languages. Furthermore, these transformations can be undertaken at a fraction of the cost of manual or semi-automated methods. TSRI's JANUS™ has proven to be a low risk technology through multiple successful applications to mission critical defense systems. The JANUS™ toolset maximizes the reuse of models and transformation rules. New legacy or target languages and databases have been added in as little as a few weeks. Because the model-driven architecture within JANUS™, software models and transformation rules are reused with near optimum efficiency.