FORM 2
THE PATENTS ACT, 1970 (39 of 1970)
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION (See section 10; rule 13)
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATED RE-ARCHITECTING OF LEGACY SYSTEMS USING OBJECT-ORIENTED LANGUAGE
Applicant: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd
Nationality: An Indian company
Address : Air India Building,, 11th floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai-400 021, Maharashtra, India
The following specification particularly describes and ascertains the nature of this invention and the manner in which it is to be performed.


FIELD OF THE INVENTION:
The present invention relates to an automated re-architecting of legacy systems using object-oriented language.
The present invention relates to multiple program abstractions, extraction methodologies, transformation, and code conversion to convert monolithic architecture of system to a request-response architecture using Object Oriented language such as Java.
This automated re-architecting is achieved by recognizing instances of architectural and design patterns, mapping them into models and using these models for generating/ transforming to object oriented code.
PRIOR ART AND ITS LIMITATIONS
References:
US 6,467,079
Most of the prior art applications deal with literal transformation of RPG to Object Oriented code. That requires more time and is very complex. It is not an intellectual method and moreover does not prove useful with changing times.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Businesses have invested money, time, and resources in computers and computer systems which store and access large quantities of data relating to specific matters, such as financial accounts, inventory, customers, employees, etc. Businesses are sensitive to the loss of their investment when new computer technology arises which may result in their investments becoming obsolete. An
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important consideration, therefore, in introducing new computer technology is its adaptation with existing computer technology.
Modem architecture like Service oriented architecture (SOA), web services are gaining popularity. These architectures provide better re-usability and access within and across the organization. Monolithic Legacy architecture however provides a closed environment and cannot operate with SOA based applications. Though wrappers can be provided to make old logic into services, the real benefits can be observed where Legacy architecture is migrated to modern architecture.
Object-oriented" programming (OOP) is gaining popularity as it provides benefits over procedural programming. OOP languages, such as Smalltalk, C++, and Java, allow programmers to approach their programming tasks in a way that is believed to be more natural and intuitive than the rigidity of the procedural programming languages. The main problem, however, is that an 00 architecture does not inherently interface smoothly with architecture of Legacy systems in which businesses may have a substantial investment.
Therefore there is a dire need to develop a system that has a flexible and a smooth interface. The present invention aims at developing such a system.
The goal of OOP is to reduce the time and costs associated with developing complex software by creating small, reusable sections of program code that can be quickly and easily combined and reused to create new programs. The code sections are known as objects. The software object may model the attributes or characteristics of the real-world object and, in many cases, may also model its behavior.
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Despite the recent development of modern architecture like SOA and dedicated OOP languages, businesses can't take the benefits of these state of the art practices since they have already invested billions of dollars over the years in their existing systems and procedural code. It would be an extraordinarily uneconomical task to manually transfer all legacy procedural codes into OOP codes following modem architecture It is a known-to-be-difficult problem. Obsolete documentation, core programmers are no longer available and the structure of the system is not known, are some of the main reasons. The known techniques of syntactic (one-to-one) conversion are not suitable since they do not result in architectural modifications to take the real benefits.
The current invention aims to provide a system that can re-architect the legacy code in an automated fashion. This automated re-architecting is achieved by recognizing instances of architectural and design patterns, mapping them into models and using these models for generating/ transforming to object oriented code.
It is the object of the invention to establish and evolve architectural and design abstractions.
It is also the object of the present invention to establish the programming patterns to generate instances of the abstraction.
It is yet another object of the present invention to establish criteria to generate or convert the existing legacy code into 00 code based on multiple abstractions. It is yet another object of the invention to link the converted instances of the abstractions to build a functionality equivalent re-architected application.
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SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Many organizations are forced to employ the expensive approach of re-writing the software from scratch. This is because there are no techniques that are ably supported by tools to re-architect the legacy software to the open environment, while making effective use of the features of the new environment.
Present invention addresses this problem by defining abstractions that are based on the architectural and design aspects. By recognizing occurrences of such patterns in the legacy code, the implicit architecture and design may be recovered. Present invention aims at defining appropriate abstractions, and assists architecture and design recovery by tool based recognition of the patterns in the legacy programs. Using domain and context knowledge to parameterize the extraction algorithms, the present invention maps the program parts to predefined, open architecture patterns.
ADVANTAGES

Dated this 11 th day of April 2006 (Agent For Applicant)
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1. It is very cost effective tool.
2. It focuses on abstractions and not literal transformations.
3. It is flexible to suit to changing modern needs.
4. It lays a foundation for migration of software systems.
5. It is a very intellectual tool that brings about effective and efficient results.
6. The programming patterns to extract various abstractions are specified and not programmed.