Accession Number:

ADA326945

Title:

Implications of Distributed Object Technology for Reengineering.

Descriptive Note:

Final rept.,

Corporate Author:

CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIV PITTSBURGH PA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INST

Personal Author(s):

• Weiderman, Nelson
• Northrop, Linda
• Smith, Dennis
• Tilley, Scott
• Wallnau, Kurt

Report Date:

1997-06-01

Pagination or Media Count:

39.0

Abstract:

Distributed object technology is profoundly changing the ways in which software systems evolve over time. To a large extent, the focus of reengineering has been to understand legacy systems and to extract their essential functionality so that they can be rewritten as more robust and more maintainable systems over the long term. However, object technology, wrapping strategies, and the Web may be changing the focus and economics of reengineering. The question posed by this paper is the extent to which reengineering strategies ought to continue to use program understanding technology. The costbenefit ratio of certain forms of program understanding appears to be staying roughly the same over time, while the costbenefit ratio of wrapping legacy systems or their subsystems is dropping rapidly. As a result, new reengineering strategies that place less emphasis on deep program understanding, and more emphasis on distributed object technologies, should now be considered.

Descriptors:

• *SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
• *OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
• DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING
• REAL TIME
• SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
• ONLINE SYSTEMS
• COMPUTER PROGRAM VERIFICATION
• COMPUTER PROGRAM RELIABILITY
• DISTRIBUTED INTERACTIVE SIMULATION

Subject Categories:

• Computer Programming and Software

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE