
[ Summary | Objectives
& Results | Work Packages | Deliverables
| Partners | EC Projects
| Re-Engineering Links ]
Introductory Presentations
HTML-converted Microsoft Powerpoint presentations are available for viewing. These
present
- A brief overview of the Renaissance Consortium, method, aims and reports.
- The technical achievements of the Renaissance project, including overviews of results, framework fundamentals, and the integration/evolutionary requirements that provide the motivation for consultancy reports.
Objectives
The principle business objective of the RENAISSANCE partners
are to improve their capability to offer commercial services in the area
of system evolution and to increase their return on investment in their
software assets. To meet these objectives, the RENAISSANCE project has
established the following technical objective:
- Support application evolution from centralised to distributed client-server
architectures.
- Support the recovery of system family designs and subsequent evolution
using existing CASE tools.
- Support evolution through the reuse of sub-systems recycled from existing
systems.
- Provide a method for project managers to assess the costs, risks and
benefits of evolution options.
- Integrate all of this support into a systematic method to support system
evolution.
This research is driven by a number of problems with the current
state of the industry, towards a set of relevant rationale
issues, to address these goals.
Results
- A set of RENAISSANCE consultancy
reports. These will cover architectural modelling, client-server
evolution, evolution risks economics, the reverse engineering of system
families and the recycling of reusable code components. The consultancy
reports will provide detailed advice for consultants who are developing
services and users who are applying the project results.
- An integrated RENAISSANCE evolution
method to guide the process of system evolution. This will
be distinguished from other re-engineering projects by its focus on architectural
evolution and the recovery of designs of system families in C and 4GLs
rather than the more common COBOL or Fortran.
- HoodNICE CASE toolkit extensions to reverse
engineer the design of system families written in C.
Workplan
The technical work of the project will be driven by the needs of application
partners. We have established a management structure to ensure that application
requirements are central and workplan which allows adequate time for evaluation
in a real commercial setting. The technical work of the project will be
carried out in three closely related development streams with associated
exploitation and management activities:
- A baseline technology development stream.
This will be concerned with solving some of the technological problems
of evolution. The outputs will be the RENAISSANCE reports
and HoodNICE toolset extensions.
- A method integration stream. This
will integrate the technological solutions and will provide process guidelines,
notations, rules and recomendations for system evolution. Advice on the
use of existing CASE and re-engineering tools will be included. The principle
output will be the evolution
method handbook.
- An evaluation stream. The technical
activities will be guided by a parallel evaluation activity. This will
define, in detail, the evolution problems faced by the application partners
and will evaluate the technical work of the project. The key outputs will
be a definition of the specific problems faced by application partners,
a framework for assessing the evolution method and reports on the evaluation
itself.
Exploitation
The results of the RENAISSANCE project will be exploited in following
ways:
- Direct exploitation of the results by the application partners to improve
their own applications management, evolution, re-engineering and reuse
processes. Application requirements will drive the project, so that the
method developed will be immediately applicable by the application partners.
- Through consultancy on system evolution, re-engineering, reuse and
client-server transition by partners. This consultancy will exploit the
RENAISSANCE report. The method
book will disseminate the method and will help market associated consultancy
activities.
The project work is positioned in important and growing market areas
(re-engineering, client-server migration, 4GLs) so has a firm market opportunity
which will pull the project results through to exploitation.
CSEG 1996
The RENAISSANCE Project