Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to devices and associated methods for transforming legacy application sources to modern languages, and more specifically, but not limited to, a system and method for and enabling them to deploy and execute erstwhile legacy application on modern technology platform and multi-tier architecture.
Background
The various technical divisions of an organization, irrespective of the domain, face several challenges with applications that are built and executing on legacy or obsolete technology platforms. Such legacy technology platforms include but not limited to Visual Basic, Mainframe/COBOL, PowerBuilder, OracleForms, HPS, Delphi, FoxPro, ProC etc.
The Information Technology Systems that are developed specially for a particular organisation have a long lifetime. Many such systems that are still in use were developed many years ago using technologies that are now obsolete.
However, these systems are still critical and are essential for the normal functioning of the organization and are called legacy systems
The various challenges comprise:
Outdated and obsolete technology imposing limitations to implement modern
business and customer demands
No support from platform vendor and lack of future roadmap for the platform
High cost of operations and ownership (TCO) including licensing costs,
infrastructure costs and maintenance costs
Longer time to implement new features / products
Technology SMEs retiring and non-availability of skilled people
Thus, there is a significant risk and cost involved in simply scrapping a legacy system and replacing it with a system that has been developed using modern technology as legacy systems rarely have a complete specification.
Also, during their lifetime Legacy systems undergo many changes which are not always documented.
Thus, in order to remain useful, legacy systems need to be transformed into modernized systems.
Again, changing legacy systems is often expensive as
- Different parts implemented by different teams and there is no consistent
programming style
- The system documentation is often out-of-date
- The system structure may be corrupted by many years of maintenance
- Techniques to save space or increase speed at the expense of understandability may have been used
- File structures used may be incompatible
The traditional solutions to overcome at least above challenges with legacy technology platforms include:

1. Replacing the legacy applications with COTS solutions
2. Re-engineering / re-building the applications on modern technology platforms
3. Migrating the legacy application sources to run on modern technology platforms
4. Modernization / Transformation of the legacy application sources to comply with modern architecture, tools, frameworks and platform
The inventors of the present application have performed a COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS of various existing solutions.
For example, the following table compares these solution options for transforming the legacy applications based on various parameters:

The present invention proposes and transforms the legacy applications with maximum optimization of at least above parameters.
The Automated Technology Modernization Accelerator (ATMA) proposed by the present invention transforms legacy application sources to modern language and enables them deploy and execute on modern technology platform and multi-tier architecture, thus also improving non-functional qualities of the applications such as scalability, flexibility, modularity, extendibility, maintainability etc.
Summary
For purposes of summarizing, certain aspects, advantages, and novel features of the disclosure have been described herein. It is to be understood that not necessarily all such advantages may be achieved in accordance with any one particular embodiment of the disclosure. Thus, the present disclosure may be embodied or carried out in a manner that achieves or optimizes one advantage or group of advantages as taught herein without necessarily achieving other advantages as may be taught suggested herein.

It is an object of the present invention to transform legacy application sources to modern languages.
It is an object of the present disclosure to deploy and execute erstwhile legacy application on modern technology platform and multi-tier architecture.
It is an object of the present invention to rearrange the elements of legacy application into a syntax tree and capturing the inter-dependencies among such elements.
In an embodiment, the present invention to provide for a Code Quality Corrector to use code quality assessment rules and apply appropriate fixes to legacy application under processing.
It is an object of the present invention to assess the functional quality of the transformed application at development phase by providing test cases.
All the embodiments as herein described with respect to the present invention are applicable to the method and the corresponding system.
These and other embodiments of the present disclosure will also become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of the embodiments having reference to the attached figures, the disclosure not being limited to any particular embodiments disclosed.
Brief Description of the Drawings
For a better understanding of the embodiments of the systems and methods described herein, and to show more clearly how they may be carried into effect, reference will now be made, by way of example, to the accompanying drawings, wherein:
FIGURE 1 illustrates a diagrammatic representation of an architectural environment in which the present invention operates, in accordance with one or more embodiments of the present disclosure.
FIGURE 2 illustrates an exemplary Element Tree Generation by an ATMA AST
Creator of the present invention.
FIGURE 3 illustrates an exemplary transformation of an ELEMENT TREE into TARGET SOURCE and architecture by ATMA Walkers & Generators.
FIGURE 4 illustrates an exemplary flow chart depicting code quality correction.
FIGURE 5 illustrates an exemplary Unit Test Generation process by ATMA UTGen module of the present invention.
FIGURE 6 illustrates an exemplary Regression Test Suite Generation (ATGen) for functional testing of the modernized applications.
FIGURE 7 illustrates an exemplary ATMA based legacy application modernization process of the present invention.
FIGURE 8 An exemplary architecture model of the present invention.

FIGURE 9 (a) An exemplary screenshot depicting a Visual Basic application before and after ATMA modernization to Java.
FIGURE 9 (b) An exemplary screenshot depicting a sample screenshot from HPS application before and after ATMA modernization to Java.
FIGURE 9 (c) An exemplary sample screenshot from Oracle Forms application before and after ATMA modernization to .NET.
FIGURE 10 illustrates an exemplary architecture of electronic device of the present invention.
Detailed Description
Exemplary embodiments now will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. The disclosure may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey its scope to those skilled in the art. The terminology used in the detailed description of the particular exemplary embodiments illustrated in the accompanying drawings is not intended to be limiting. In the drawings, like numbers refer to like elements.
The specification may refer to "an", "one" or "some" embodiment(s) in several locations. This does not necessarily imply that each such reference is to the same embodiment(s), or that the feature only applies to a single embodiment. Single features of different embodiments may also be combined to provide other embodiments.
As used herein, the singular forms "a", "an" and "the" are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless expressly stated otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms "includes", "comprises", "including" and/or "comprising" when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof. It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being "connected" or "coupled" to another element, it can be directly connected or coupled to the other element or intervening elements may be present. Furthermore, "connected" or "coupled" as used herein may include operatively connected or coupled. As used herein, the term "and/or" includes any and all combinations and arrangements of one or more of the associated listed items.
Unless otherwise defined, all terms (including technical and scientific terms) used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this disclosure pertains. It will be further understood that terms, such as those defined in commonly used dictionaries, should be interpreted as having a meaning that is consistent with their meaning in the context of the relevant art and will not be interpreted in an idealized or overly formal sense unless expressly so defined herein.
The figures depict a simplified structure only showing some elements and functional entities, all being logical units whose implementation may differ from what is shown. The connections shown are logical connections; the actual physical connections may be different. It is apparent to a person skilled in the art that the structure may also

comprise other functions and structures. It should be appreciated that the functions, structures, elements and the protocols used in communication are irrelevant to the present disclosure. Therefore, they need not be discussed in more detail here.
Also, all logical units described and depicted in the figures include the software and/or hardware components required for the unit to function. Further, each unit may comprise within itself one or more components which are implicitly understood. These components may be operatively coupled to each other and be configured to communicate with each other to perform the function of the said unit.
The term "legacy technology" can refer to applications, platforms, hardware setups, programming languages and other technologies that have been superseded by newer options.
A typical legacy application consists of elements such as user interface controls, controller components handling the user events performed on the controls / navigation of pages, model components representing/holding the data, service components implementing the business logic/processing logic/data access/data transformation etc.
These elements are usually arranged in monolithic or client server architecture and are all tightly coupled with each other making the application difficult to scale, maintain, extend.
FIGURE 1 depicts typical elements of a legacy application.
Such elements include but are not limited to
UI Control Model Service Controller
To identify such elements, the ATMA platform of the present invention provides a comprehensive sets of lexicons and pattern matching rules for each of the supported programming languages to identify the above types of elements in the respective platforms.
FIGURE 2 illustrates an exemplary Element Tree Generation by an ATMA AST Creator of the present invention.
After recognizing of the elements as identified above, ATMA AST Creator builds an element tree by
One of the major objectives for rearranging identified elements is to appropriately capture the inter-dependencies among such elements.
FIGURE 3 illustrates an exemplary transformation of an Element Tree into Target source and architecture by ATMA Walkers & Generators.
The ATMA platform of the present invention implements a set of "Walker" components, that are specialized to filter, decompose and decouple a specific type of the elements of the tree, together with the metadata and behavior of the elements.

Each walker component is coupled with a respective generator component. The generator component generates source code equivalent to that of the element that is filtered, along with all its characteristics, behavior and interactions.
FIGURE 4 illustrates an exemplary flow chart depicting code quality correction.
The ATMA platform of the present invention additionally consists of a novel component by named "CQC (Code Quality Corrector)", capable of automatically reducing the technical debt of the transformed code in target technology platform (Java) by automated code quality corrections.
The CQC of the present invention executes static code quality analysis tools such as Sonar, to assess the technical code quality and obtains the list of code quality defects / violations.
About 50% of such code quality defects are corrected by CQC without requiring any intervention to reduce the overall technical debt of the transformed application.
The CQC has correction handlers for each type of the code quality assessment rules to apply appropriate fixes for the violations.
FIGURE 5 illustrates an exemplary Unit Test Generation process by ATMA UTGen module of the present invention.
The UTGen component of the ATMA platform is capable of generating comprehensive set of unit test scripts for the selected target component or package, which can be executed on Junit or TestNG platforms to assess the functional quality of the transformed application at development phase itself, to reduce the functional debt.
Thus, the UTGen helps to identify the prospective errors of the application to be transformed at the development phase itself.
In particular, UTGen generates unit test cases for performing unit testing of any/all methods of a Java Component.
Essentially, UTGen generates one unit test method for each of the operations in the class being tested.
The generated code for each unit test case contains at least:
1. Code for declaration of the operation arguments
2. Initialization of the operation arguments with values from an externalized data sets
3. Invocation of the test method using the arguments created & initialized as above
4. Validating the return values / object attributes against the assertion data specified in the data sets
5. Exception handling and corresponding assertion statements
In addition, the unit test classes are instrumented with appropriate annotations necessary to invoke the component being tested in its deployment context such as EJB container, Spring Container etc.

UTGen also offers capability to generate instrumentation template for mocking some of the dependent components for unit testing in isolated environment.
FIGURE 6 illustrates an exemplary Regression Test Suite Generation (ATGen) for functional testing of the modernized applications.
The ATGen is a novel component of ATMA platform that is built to provide an improved approach to functional testing of the modernized applications.
The ATGen component allows intuitive tests to be developed and executed. Test engineers use this tool to develop and generate test cases for test scenarios based on HTML source code taken from the screens in the transformed applications.
The test scripts are highly maintainable and reusable.
The present invention provides a robust ATMA platform to handle transformation of multiple legacy platforms including but not limited to PowerBuilder, Oracle Forms, Delphi, Visual Basic, HPS, COBOL, PL/SQL, TSQL, PL1, .NET/C#, Pro-C and FoxPro.
The proposed modernization engine of ATMA significantly improves the productivity and quality of the migration and is extendible to support transformation of many different legacy languages and supports multiple target platforms such as Java/JEE, .NET/C#, SFDC, HTML5/AngularJS etc.
FIGURE 7 illustrates an exemplary ATMA based legacy application modernization process of the present invention.
The "Automated Technology Modernization Accelerator (ATMA)" of the present invention helps in
transforming the legacy application sources to modern languages
enabling transformed code in modern languages to be deployed and executed on modern technology platform and multi-tier architecture, thus even improving non-functional qualities of the applications such as scalability, flexibility, modularity, extendibility, maintainability etc.
The technical solution provided by the present invention offers flexibility to choose from multiple options of architecture, implementation frameworks, deployment containers etc.
The UTGen, CQC 85 ATGen as described above provide unique capabilities extending the automation capabilities beyond construction phase.
Unlike existing mere code conversion tools, the present invention provided for comprehensive automation platform to achieve legacy modernization, handling architecture and other non-functional characteristics.
The ATMA significantly improves the productivity and quality of the modernization.
The ATMA helps to overcome the challenges associated with applications running on legacy technology platforms by:
eliminating the risk to business continuity due to technology obsolescence

overcoming the risk due to depleting number of skilled people on legacy
technology, by migrating to modern technologies with abundant availability of
skills
assuring delivery and low risk by
a. requiring very less involvement from business SMEs and technology SMEs
b. not changing in data model and as-is business logic conversion, hence
minimum risk of losing functionality
c. not impacting the end user experience and not requiring re-training of end
users and therefore not impacting the business continuity
Also, as modernized application adapts to open standards on modern platform, no proprietary tools or frameworks; hence no vendor lock-in needed.
Also, as the modernized application conforms to coding standards, it results in lesser defects and decrease the cost of quality due to minimal rework requirements.
The present invention is economical to transform as the ATMA
a. helps to achieve re-engineering through automated code transformation,
thus saves more than 60% of costs and time for legacy modernization
b. allows modernized applications to run on low cost hardware and software
platforms
c. allows for low cost for application maintenance due to better tools,
processes and high productivity
d. Lower TCO overall
• Modern architecture enabling business innovation
a. ATMA results in modern multi-tier architecture with well separated layers,
loose coupling of components, reusability, integration and deployment
capabilities, cloud enablement - all help for innovation in business and IT
processes
i. Web based access, low footprint on user desktops, opens up scope of usability improvements
b. Open Architecture - Supports most of the databases and application
servers
c. Flexible to integrate with external application with SOA/Web services,
distribution channels
• High quality and consistency of deliverables
a. The output code is consistent throughout the application, hence easy to
understand and maintain
b. Results in less number of defects due to standardization
• Flexible 85 extendible
a. Supports compliance to various technology implementation frameworks for
the target platforms as per the requirements of customers
b. Extendible to add support for any additional legacy (source) and modern
(target) platforms

More than ten customer projects have been executed using above mentioned ATMA approach and the actual efforts consumed for the transformation of the three applications are compared against the estimated efforts through re-engineering approach.
The effort for re-engineering approach are estimated based on industry standard benchmark data for function point estimation of scope and productivity for the respective technology platforms. The actual effort consumed by ATMA solution approach are measured and compared against the estimated approach to derive the percentage of savings achieved through ATMA approach.
The following table presents the metrics from three different modernization projects executed for the customers for different combinations of source and target platforms:

A typical exemplary architecture of electronic device of the present invention is explained with reference to Figure 10.
The present invention is technically enabled by various hardware elements such as digital signal processors, memory, Field Programmable Arrays etc. Such hardware elements may reside on various electronic devices such as client machines, server etc.
The CPU bus is, essentially, an interconnection wires that all subsystems are connected to. In general, only one pair of devices can talk to each other at a time, so communication of the bus must be coordinated to prevent message collisions. This coordination is often handled by the CPU.
The central processing unit (CPU) executes instructions contained in memory. These instructions are executed at a rate specified by the computer's clock.
The CPU needs to access two different types of memory in order to execute a program. There are two types of memories used in micro-controllers. These are read-only memory (ROM) and random access memory (RAM).

In a micro-controller, read-only memory (ROM) is used to store permanent programs, operating drivers, and data. Many micro-controllers use erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) or electrically erasable programmable read-only memory(EEPROM) to store programs, operating drivers, and data. EPROM and EEPROM are non-volatile memories.
Random access memory or RAM is used to temporarily store data and instructions.
The relevant components of mobile device(s) and base station subsystems of the present invention selectively comprise of:
- Signal control unit (not shown):
• Device: Mainly comprising of CPU + software in memory + if section, for controlling the bandwidth usage in device.
• Service provider network: Mainly comprising of server + software in memory + if section, for controlling the bandwidth usage in network.
Memory unit:
• Device: Mainly comprising of memory, for storing software + data associated with one or more services/tasks/operations as transceived by the said signal control unit.
• Service provider network: Mainly comprising of memory, for storing software + data associated with one or more services/tasks/operations as transceived by the said signal control unit
- Signal processing unit:
• Device: Mainly comprising of CPU + software in memory + speaker, for processing short switching trigger data pulse signal to accomplish the operations by performing output to the speaker after recalling the corresponding service memory from device and confirm to network provider/operator.
• Service provider network: Mainly comprising of server + software in memory, for processing short switching trigger data pulse signal to accomplish the operations by transceiving to device and confirmation from device.

We Claim
1. A method for transforming legacy application (s) sources into target application
source (s), comprising
Identifying elements of at least one legacy application;
generating an element tree based on said ELEMENTS to capture
interdependencies among such ELEMENTS;
filtering at least a part of said ELEMENTS along with associated metadata;
generating a source code equivalent to that of the said filtered element ;
wherein the generated source code is assessed to detect and correct code defects and the method is configured for generating test cases for identifying the potential errors of the target application under development.
2. A method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein elements of legacy application
comprise:
- UI Control
- Model Service Controller.

3. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein identifying elements comprises lexicons and pattern matching.
4. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein generating of element tree comprises rearranging elements as a syntax tree.
5. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein filtering comprises decomposing and decoupling specified elements of the tree.
6. A system for transforming legacy application (s) sources into target application source(s), comprising a processor (102) coupled with a memory (103), the processor (102) configured to
Identify elements of at least one legacy application;
generate an element tree based on said ELEMENTS to capture
interdependencies among such ELEMENTS;
filter at least a part of said ELEMENTS along with associated metadata;
generating a source code equivalent to that of the said filtered element ;
wherein the generated source code is assessed to detect and correct code defects and the method is configured for generating test cases for identifying the potential errors of the target application underdevelopment.
7. A system for transforming legacy application (s) sources into target application
source (s) as claimed in claim 6 and configured to perform the steps as claimed
in claims 1 to 5.