Recycling software components extracted from legacy programs

This paper depicts yet another approach to cope with legacy software systems, a struggle that began already in the early 1980's with the development of the first restructuring tools and has continued throughout the last 20 years with only modest success. In the meantime, reengineering technology has subsided and is now in the process of being replaced by new techniques aimed towards the reuse of existing software in modern distributed architectures. Such reuse presupposes a recycling process to extract components from existing programs using slicing techniques and transform them into a reusable form using wrapping techniques. The following research describes not only how reusability of legacy software can be measured, but also how it can be enhanced. The author cites his current work in extracting reusable modules from existing software with the aid of automated reverse-, reengineering and wrapping tools.