Using knowledge representation to understand interactive systems

System migration presents a myriad of challenges in software maintenance. The user interfaces of interactive systems can undergo significant change during migration. Program understanding techniques can be used to create abstract models of the user interface that can be used to generate a new user interface on the target platform. Using a knowledge representation to model the abstractions has the advantage of providing support for transformation to the new user interface environment. This paper details the knowledge base and representation incorporated into the Model Oriented Reengineering Process for HCI (MORPH) toolkit, which supports program understanding for interactive systems. It illustrates the process with an example transforming MORPH abstractions to the Java Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT).