Generation of stateless components from procedural programs for reuse in a distributed system

The paper describes the techniques and tools developed by the author to generate stateless components from existing COBOL programs for reuse as server nodes in a distributed system. The techniques are based on static analysis, dataflow slicing and interface reengineering. The tools are implemented as a series of batch transformation processes under a Windows-NT user interface. The purpose of the work is to reuse legacy software to fulfil old business functions in a new technical environment with a minimum of change, thereby saving the costs of redevelopment.