FORWARD AND REVERSE ENGINEERING USING UML WITH RATIONAL ROSE AND OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

Sometimes the source code itself is the only documentation available for post-delivery maintenance. When maintaining legacy systems—that is, software that is still in use but was created no more than 15 or 20 years ago—this occurs far too frequently. It might be quite challenging to maintain the code in these situations. Starting with source code and trying to reproduce the design documents or even the specs is one method of addressing this issue. We refer to this procedure as reverse engineering. This approach can be aided by CASE tools. A nice printer is one of the easiest, and it could make the code easier to see. Other technologies create diagrams, like UML diagrams or flow charts, straight from the source code; these visual aids can support the design recovery process. One of the two options available to the maintenance team after reconstructing the design is to try to reconstruct the specifications, make the necessary modifications to the reconstructed specifications, and then re-implement the product in the conventional manner. In the context of reverse engineering, forward engineering is the standard development process that moves from analysis through design to implementation. Roundtrip engineering is the process of combining forward and backward engineering. This paper describes how to use UML with Java and Rational Rose to do this.