Reusing legacy COBOL code with UML collaboration diagrams via a Wide Spectrum Language

Many legacy systems were developed in COBOL, which still play an important role in business. It is an unavoidable issue for organisations to maintain or replace these COBOL systems. In order to make a better use of these legacy COBOL systems, research on modelling and reusing COBOL code are significant. This paper presents an approach to modelling legacy COBOL code with UML collaboration diagrams via a Wide Spectrum Language (WSL). Firstly, legacy COBOL code is transferred into WSL, which is an intermediate language. Secondly, WSL representation is restructured to eliminate GOTO statements. Then an object concept model is created by operating WSL representation. Finally, the collaboration diagrams are constructed based on this object concept model. These collaboration diagrams express the dynamic behaviour of the system, using the structural class and relationship elements of the model, and facilitate engineers to understand and reuse legacy COBOL code.