A framework for reverse engineering DoD legacy information systems

A framework to legacy information systems, which have been selected by reverse engineers, in the US Department of Defense heterogeneous environment, is reported. This approach was developed to recover business rules, domain information, functional requirements, and data architectures, largely in the form of normalized, logical data models. In a pilot study, the data from diverse systems (ranging from home grown languages and database management systems developed during the late 1960s to those using high order languages and commercial network database management systems) are reverse engineered. The pilot study is being used to validate and refine the framework with real-life systems to develop a baseline approach for reverse engineering existing systems; to scope and estimate future system re-engineering costs; and to determine the economic viability of re-engineering, reverse, and forward engineering efforts