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Subject:Re: Reverse engineering processes From:Richard Lewis <tech44writer -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:lorraine -at- lorraineflynn -dot- com, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:39:53 -0700 (PDT)
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?
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