Software re engineering process for declarative user interface

Abstract

There is a need to modernize legacy business applications as the systems are poor in user interface, documentation and are unable to get the benefits from internet and mobile technology. To make them accessible over internet and handheld devices like smart phones, the core concept and the principles of Model Based Approach (MBA) are being applied in software re-engineering to generate relevant model based views. The objective of this research is to identify study, analyze and propose a model based approach for re-engineering of declarative user interface of legacy system using Model to Model transformation to optimize on resources of time, costs and persons. newlineA conceptual framework using mathematical notation is presented that forms the base of the work done. Then a detailed analysis of the existing meta-model-based transformation tools is done for the declarative model using an exhaustive criterion. Results show that all selected tools produce domain specific target model which mostly transform PSM to PSM and none produces domain independent target model transforming a PSM into PIM. Based on the result of the evaluation and in depth investigation VANILLA - a platform independent model (PIM) for declarative user interface is proposed. Also the algorithm for model transformation using PIM model for declarative user interface has been put forward. This algorithm is then applied to four of the popular libraries such as SWING, HTML5, and more recent libraries of Android and Python-Tkinter. A Model Transformation bi-directional tool VATE is developed for the implementation of PIM model and the algorithm using XML technology and relational database schema. newlineSeveral future works can be been identified and are classified in terms of their desirability and feasibility as short term and long term perspectives. This includes in-depth analysis of all the elements and their properties, adding libraries for more programming languages, exploring techniques to transform the XML Models and Meta- Models to UML Models and Meta-Models