Software Reverse Engineering to Requirements

Abstract

The aim of reverse engineering is to draw out many kinds of information from existing software and using this information for system renovation and program understanding. Based on traditional practice, reverse engineering and requirements engineering are two separate processes in software round trip engineering. In this paper, we argue that it is necessary to recover requirements from the reverse engineered outcome of legacy system and by integrating this outcome in the requirements phase of software life cycle, it is possible to have a better requirements elicitation, and clear understanding of what is redundant, what must be retained and what can be re-used. So we have presented a revised model of traditional re-engineering process and also described the rationality of the proposed model. In the paper we have also discussed briefly about software reverse engineering, requirement engineering and their basic practices and activities.