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The principal business objectives of the
industrial partners in the RENAISSANCE project are
to improve their capability to offer profitable
services in the area of systems evolution and to
increase their return on investment in their
software assets. We believe that these business
objectives can be met by developing a more
methodological approach to evolution and
re-engineering which is consistent with current
development and maintenance practises used in
industry.
The main objective of the RENAISSANCE project is
therefore:
To develop a systematic
method for system evolution and
re-engineering which is geared to the requirements
of the commercial systems domain.
The RENAISSANCE method will take into account
technology changes in this domain which have led to
customer pressure to migrate applications from
centralised mainframes to object-based, distributed
client-server systems. It will include support for
the specific requirements of 3GL and 4GL
system evolution. The key sub-objectives of the
project are therefore:
- To provide techniques for modelling the
principle structures of 3GL and 4GL business
applications, and to give advice on the use of
architectural modelling as a basis for system
understanding, re-engineering and distribution
of these systems.
- To provide techniques and technologies for
converting centralised legacy systems and
associated data to distributed client-server
system architectures.
- To provide advice to managers responsible
for planning the evolution process on evolution
strategies, organisational factors which must be
taken into account in the planning process (egg
process changes, training, etc.) and the risks
and economics of applying these strategies in
the evolution process.
The RENAISSANCE method will incorporate the
results derived from these sub-objectives as well
as the normal method components, i.e. process
guidance, suggested documentation, rules and
recommendations and report structures.
We will consider the problems of evolution of
systems written in conventional programming
languages such as COBOL (currently the market
priority due to the number and size of the systems
involved) and in 4GLs (a rapidly emerging market
need) which rely on large databases. We will ensure
that the RENAISSANCE method provides full
coverage for the domain by evaluating the results
of the project using several different types of
business systems application.
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