Reverse Engineering Methodology

As a software system evolves, new features are added and obsolete are removed, the design artifacts gradually diverge from its original design. Many approaches for design recovery or reverse engineering has been suggested, most with some type of support tool. Since a project's time constraints may prohibit use of sophisticated techniques and/or tools due to the learning curves associated with the techniques and tools, methods that can be applied in lieu of complex support tools may be required. Reverse engineering produces a high-level representation of a software system from a low-level one. This paper describes a case study, which use the methodology for reverse engineering that recovers the design artifacts of a software system from its source code and related documentation. The methodology consists of five phases, which can be attempted at different levels of abstraction according to the task at hand to recover the design artifacts. The methodology also makes use of tools, approaches and representations typically found in the forward software development process.