Software Evolution of Legacy Systems - A Case Study of Soft-migration

Andreas Fürnweger, Martin Auer, Stefan Biffl

2016

Abstract

Software ages. It does so in relation to surrounding software components: as those are updated and modernized, static software becomes evermore outdated relative to them. Such legacy systems are either tried to be kept alive, or they are updated themselves, e.g., by re-factoring or porting—they evolve. Both approaches carry risks as well as maintenance cost profiles. In this paper, we give an overview of software evolution types and drivers; we outline costs and benefits of various evolution approaches; and we present tools and frameworks to facilitate so-called “soft” migration approaches. Finally, we describe a case study of an actual platform migration, along with pitfalls and lessons learned. This paper thus aims to give software practitioners—both resource-allocating managers and choice-weighing engineers—a general framework with which to tackle software evolution and a specific evolution case study in a frequently-encountered Java-based setup.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Fürnweger A., Auer M. and Biffl S. (2016). Software Evolution of Legacy Systems - A Case Study of Soft-migration . In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS, ISBN 978-989-758-187-8, pages 413-424. DOI: 10.5220/0005771104130424


in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis16,
author={Andreas Fürnweger and Martin Auer and Stefan Biffl},
title={Software Evolution of Legacy Systems - A Case Study of Soft-migration},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS,},
year={2016},
pages={413-424},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005771104130424},
isbn={978-989-758-187-8},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 1: ICEIS,
TI - Software Evolution of Legacy Systems - A Case Study of Soft-migration
SN - 978-989-758-187-8
AU - Fürnweger A.
AU - Auer M.
AU - Biffl S.
PY - 2016
SP - 413
EP - 424
DO - 10.5220/0005771104130424