Parametric Process Model Inference

Legacy applications can be difficult and time-consuming to understand and update due to the lack of modern abstraction mechanisms in legacy languages, as well as the gradual deterioration of code due to repeated maintenance activities. We present an approach for reverse engineering process model abstractions from legacy code. Such a process model can provide a quick initial understanding of an application, and can be a useful starting point for further program exploration. Our approach takes as input a user specification of interesting events, and creates a representation (i.e., a process model) that concisely depicts the occurrences of the events and the possible control-flow among them. The key features of our approach are the use of a logical data model of the program for specifying the events, and graph-projection techniques for creating the process model.