Re: Reverse engineering processes

["Lorraine Flynn" <lorraine -at- lorraineflynn -dot- com>]

Thanks Richard. This is very useful.

What do you think about using RUP diagrams for the reverse engineering process? RUP is the methodology in use here (supposedly) so if I could use those it would be great. 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Richard Lewis 
  To: lorraine -at- lorraineflynn -dot- com ; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com 
  Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 4:39 PM
  Subject: Re: Reverse engineering processes


  Lorraine:

  When I reverse engineer the functionality of a software product (irregardless of the implementation technology), I use Data Flow Diagrams.  

  For reasons that have to do with systems analysis theory (kind of complex, I won't go into it here), the Yourdon DFD methodology is the best at proding one through a rigorous functional discovery phase.  However, for reverse engineering, the methodology does have a flaw: it has no provision for documenting the mechanism employed to accomplish a function (for example, if Method 1 is used to calculate the sales tax, then the DFD function is Calculate Sales Tax, and the mechanism used is Method 1.)   

  Getting around this problem is simply a matter of using square boxes instead of circles on the diagram, and partitioning of the lower portion of the box to contain a section within which I document my mechanism.  

  Richard Lewis

   
  lorraine -at- lorraineflynn -dot- com wrote:
    Hi

    I am working on a project which has a lot of documentation in various
    disparate locations. The architect would like to map all the front end
    functionality through to the back end java beans and perhaps even to a
    method level. I have no idea how to go about this. Does anyone know of a
    process or even a tool that might assist with this project?

    Thanks

    Lorraine
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