Re-engineering Legacy Systems for Modernization:The Role of Software Reuse

In this paper we outline our legacy modernization approach that incorporates our reuse process and repository which we have called the Knowledge Base Software Reuse (KBSR) Process and the KBSR Repository. The KBSR Process and Repository aim to give software engineers easy access to reusable software artefacts and reusable components within a defined process which we have incorporated into our modernization process. We outline how software re-engineering of legacy systems is used to populate the repository through the use of architecture reconstruction techniques to identify and categorize legacy components and other artefacts and save the components and associated information in the KBSR Repository to support modernization. The KBSR Repository can contain all categories of reconstructed software artefacts which have the potential to be reusable assets. In the context of modernization software re-engineering through architecture reconstruction has a major role to play in software reuse. We illustrate the use of the software re-engineering through software architecture reconstruction and the KBSR Process and Repository with a case study. Keywords— Software Re-engineering, Software Reuse, Knowledge Based Software Reuse Repository, Knowledge Based Software Reuse Process.