Automated Selection of Legacy Systems SOA Modernization Strategies using Decision Theory

Legacy systems modernization is one of the most pressing issues for enterprise organizations. The continuous emergence of new technologies that are proven to be more robust, scalable, and maintainable, such as those using the Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), is currently attracting a lot of legacy systems modernization stakeholders. SOA legacy system modernization projects have induced a lot of researchers to address the full modernization project life cycle starting from architecture reconstruction, code analysis, modernization strategy selection, until eventually the actual strategy to be used in modernization is selected. Such strategy selection could depend on the component/module type of the legacy system (user interface, data layer, business functionality layers) and would also depend upon the platform, programming language used in the legacy system (Mainframe, Windows VC++, .etc), as well as the type of strategy used to modernize the system. Since there are a lot of characteristics that control the selection of a modernization strategy, the modernization selection process gets tougher and tougher with the increase of such characteristics. Accordingly, we are presenting a modernization selection process along with a decision making tool that handles much of those characteristics altogether using decision theory to come up with the most optimal strategy to be used in modernizing the legacy systems in question.