Revitalizing modifiability of legacy assets

Abstract

We discuss the modifiability of Cobol legacy code and propose an approach to improving the modifiability using automatic restructuring transformations. We developed an algorithm that allows application of these transformations to large industrial Cobol systems. We demonstrate the adaptability of the transformations by extending them with new transformation patterns. Two case studies (nearly 3 million lines of code in total) with real-life Cobol programs show the large-scale application of the transformations.