Reverse Engineering Component Models for Quality Predictions

Abstract

Legacy applications are still widely spread. If a need to change deployment or update its functionality arises, it becomes difficult to estimate the performance impact of such modifications due to absence of corresponding models. In this paper, we present an extendable integrated environment based on Eclipse developed in the scope of the Q-Impress project for reverse engineering of legacy applications (in C/C++/Java). The Q-Impress project aims at modeling quality attributes (performance, reliability, maintainability) at an architectural level and allows for choosing the most suitable variant for implementation of a desired modification. The main contributions of the project include i) a high integration of all steps of the entire process into a single tool, a beta version of which has been already successfully tested on a case study, ii) integration of multiple research approaches to performance modeling, and iii) an extendable underlying meta-model for different quality dimensions.