| Many older systems, especially in the data processing domain, have a character oriented user interface. Reengineering these old interfaces to make them more user friendly would extend the life of the systems in which they are embedded.;This thesis specifically addresses the issue of user interface reverse engineering. It attempts to define a method and to develop tools to assist programmers in obtaining structural and behavioural specifications of existing user interfaces. These specifications can be used to redesign new interfaces, generate new ones and integrate them into the old systems.;A research prototype to infer user interface specifications from COBOL/CICS source code was developed. Using this tool, we successfully produced specifications of the user interface of an industrial MIS system. |
