Subscribe by Email


Saturday, June 16, 2012

Reverse Engineering - an activity involved in software re-engineering process model.


Software re-engineering process model is a very generic process meant to uplift the standard of the poor code that is currently not acceptable. This model is known to have 6 major stages namely:
  1. Inventory analysis
  2. Documentation reconstruction
  3. Reverse engineering
  4. Code re- structuring
  5. Data re- structuring
  6. Forward Engineering
This article is all about the third stage i.e., “reverse engineering” which is an important concept in itself. 
Re- engineering is usually required when the some of the sub systems of a larger software system or application need to frequently maintained. The re- engineered system is then restructured and re- documented. 

What is Reverse Engineering?


- The reverse engineering forms a very important factor in success of the re- engineering process. 
- The reverse engineering can be considered to be a process of recovering the design of the software system or application that is to be re- engineered. 
- This step involves analyzation of the software program in an effort to obtain an abstract level representation of the program that is higher than the level of the source code.  
- The software system or application is analyzed in such a way so as to understand its design and specifications and requirements. 
- Reverse engineering is an entirely individual process.
- In some cases the reverse re- engineering may be used  for specifying a software system before it is implemented again. 
- The reverse engineering process makes use of the program understanding tools like:
  1. Browsers
  2. Cross reference generators and so on.

Levels in Reverse Engineering


The reverse engineering process takes effect through the following levels:

1. Abstraction level: The design information of the software system or application is derived at the highest level possible.

2. Completeness: At the above abstraction level, the details of the system are obtained.

3. Interactivity: The degree of the human integration with 5the automated reverse engineering tools is measured.

4. Directionality: It can be either:
(a)  One way: All the extracted information is given to the sogftware engineering who is doing the maintenance.
(b)  Or two way: All the extracted information is fed to a re- engineering tool which then regenerates the old software program.

      5. Extract abstraction: From the old source the processing specifications are obtained.

     

Stages in Reverse Engineering Process


      Reverse engineering process from sommerville goes through the following stages:
      1. System to be re- engineered is subjected to automated analysis.
      2. Then it is manually annotated.
      3. With the system information obtained, a whole set of new documentation is generated containing:
       (a)  Program structure diagrams 
       (b)  Data structure diagrams and 
       (c)   Trace ability matrices.

     

Activities in Reverse Engineering Process


     There are 3 basic activities involved with the reverse engineering process:
   
    1. Understanding process: In order to understand the procedural abstractions as well as functionality analyze the source code on the level:
      (a)  System
      (b)  Program 
      (c)   Component 
      (d)  Statement and 
      (e)  Pattern
    
       2. Understanding data:  It analyzes internal data structures and data base structure.  
   3. User interfaces: It analyzes the basic actions processed by the interface, system’s behavioral response to those actions and equivalency of the interfaces.

When is Reverse Engineering Preferred?


- Reverse engineering is usually preferred when the specifications and designs of the system are required to carry out the program maintenance activities.
- The re- engineering process is preceded by the reverse engineering. 
- To put it simply, the reverse engineering can be thought of as a process that goes back through the whole development cycle.
- UML is a source that supports reverse engineering. 
- Different people have their own different perceptions of the reversion engineering. 
- It can also be thought of as an inversion of the water fall model of software development. 


No comments:

Facebook activity