=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1129/paper14
|storemode=property
|title=Towards Quality-Driven Software Migration
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1129/paper14.pdf
|volume=Vol-1129
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/se/JelschenPW14
}}
==Towards Quality-Driven Software Migration==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1129/paper14.pdf
Towards Quality-Driven Software Migration
Jan Jelschen, Gaurav Pandey, Andreas Winter
Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg, Germany
{jelschen,pandey,winter}@se.uni-oldenburg.de
Long-running software systems suffer from software erosion, due to their constant evo-
lution to meet new or changing requirements, severely limiting their maintainability. Mi-
grating software systems, i.e. transferring legacy systems into modern environments and
technologies without changing functionality [FWE+ 12], is a key technique of software
evolution, and serves to keep existing software systems operational. Structured migrations
allow for transferring established software solutions to cutting edge technology, without
having to consider the significantly higher risks of developing a new system from scratch.
Reliable predictions regarding long-term trends of software systems’ quality are a prereq-
uisite to make sensible decisions between software migration or redevelopment strategies,
which enable a system’s continued development, evolution, and operation. Especially
when planning to migrate software systems, and choosing appropriate tools, a prognosis of
project-specific quality properties of the system after migration is required. To assess and
compare software quality before and after language migrations, like from COBOL to Java,
a major obstacle to overcome is the paradigm shift between procedural and object-oriented
programming that occurs (or should occur) when translating between these languages. For
example, any measures which try to capture object-oriented properties like encapsulation
will only provide meaningful results on the target system, with nothing to compare to on
the source system side, i.e. a direct comparison is impossible.
Recognizing these challenges, two main research questions can be identified, which lead
to two sets of central objectives regarding quality criteria and quality prediction, to ad-
dress them: 1. How to measure and compare the quality of legacy and migrated software
systems? 2. How to predict the quality of software migration results?
Quality Criteria. A basic prerequisite for quality measurements is having a set of criteria
appropriate for assessing and comparing the quality of software systems under migration,
and knowing which criteria are relevant for a specific project. Whereas criteria for incre-
mental quality monitoring in plain forward engineering projects, utilizing a fixed devel-
opment environment, are known, comparable criteria applicable for legacy and migrated
systems are unknown. Therefore, a catalog of quality criteria has to be assembled, elicited
from literature review and expert interviews, and a process to define a migration project’s
goals, and select suitable, measurable criteria has to be created.
Quality Prediction. To help a cooperation to decide whether to migrate, or choose a
different strategy (e.g. re- or new-development), or to tailor a migration process to specific
needs, information is needed on the resulting system’s quality properties before carrying
out the migration. A quality prediction model has to be derived by measuring software
systems before and after migration, and looking for correlations. Such a model will serve
Copyright c 2014 for the individual papers by the papers’ authors. Copying permitted for private and academic
purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
8
Q-MIG
Software Migration Toolchain
Source Target
Transformation
System M1 Analysis Tools M2 M3 Generator Tools M4 System
Tools
Artifacts Artifacts
Quality Assurance Quality
Metrics
Tools Reports
Quality Control Center
Figure 1: The Q-MIG software migration toolchain and quality control center.
to project quality properties after a migration, given the source system, and the migration
toolchain with its parameters. It can also be used to refine such parameters in an iterative
process, to meet certain quality requirements in the target system.
Figure 1 depicts a generic software migration toolchain, equipped with a quality control
center. The former takes source systems and transforms them into target systems, accord-
ing to the migration scenario’s parameters, using appropriate analysis, transformation, and
code generation tools. The latter complements the migration process by tapping into it
at monitoring points, evaluating quality criteria using metrics at different steps, assessing
and comparing the quality using quality assurance tools, and generating quality reports.
To realize the quality control center, the central questions subject to research are a) which
criteria are relevant for a given migration scenario, b) how to measure and interpret them
in a way that correlates with experts’ assessments, and c) how to sensibly compare them,
considering programming paradigm shifts.
These issues will be addressed by the project Q-MIG: Building a Quality-Driven, Generic
Tool-Chain for Software Migration1 , which commenced on January 1, 2014. Q-MIG is
a joint project of pro et con Innovative Informatikanwendungen GmbH (focusing on the
software migration toolchain [EU11]) and Carl von Ossietzky University (focusing on the
quality control center). For integration, a service-based approach will be used [JMOW13].
Q-MIG aims at enabling project managers and software developers to make early strategic
decisions regarding the realization of software migrations, and to already carry out targeted
quality assuring measures during the migration. At the workshop, we would like to discuss
how to predict comparable (internal) quality criteria for software migration projects.
References
[EU11] U. Erdmenger, D. Uhlig. Ein Translator für die COBOL-Java-Migration. Software-
technik-Trends, 31(2), 2011.
[FWE+ 12] A. Fuhr, A. Winter, U. Erdmenger, T. Horn, U. Kaiser, V. Riediger, W. Teppe. Model-
Driven Software Migration - Process Model, Tool Support and Application. In A. Ionita,
M. Litoiu, G. Lewis, eds, Migrating Legacy Applications: Challenges in Service Ori-
ented Architure and Cloud Computing Environments. IGI, Hershey, 2012.
[JMOW13] J. Jelschen, J. Meier, M.-C. Ostendorp, A. Winter. A Description Model for Software
Evolution Services. In CoNaIISI, Cordoba, November 2013. RIISIC.
1 Q-MIG is funded by the Central Innovation Program SME of the German Federal Ministry of Economics
and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie - BMWi). Funding code: KF3182501KM3.
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