Software reverse engineering process: Factors, elements and features

Abstract

The reverse engineering presents the system artifacts at higher levels of abstraction for maintenance activities. This paper presents an overview of the case studies on various types of existing software system to recover the different artifacts existing at implementation, structural, functional and domain levels. As a result of these case studies; the factors on which reverse engineering process depends, features and elements required by the reverse engineering process to recover the artifacts for maintenance at domain, functional, structural and implementation abstraction levels in varying details for reverse engineering are identified and presented in this paper. Key words: Case studies, software maintenance, re-engineering, reverse engineering, design recovery.