African Journal of Library and Information Science

ISSN 2756-3383

African Journal of Library and Information Science ISSN 5721-610X Vol. 4 (8), pp. 001-013, August, 2018. © International Scholars Journals

Review

Software reverse engineering process: Factors, elements and features

Nadim Asif

Department of Computer Science, GC University Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan. E-mail: [email protected].

Accepted 04 February, 2018

Abstract

The reverse engineering presents the system artifacts at higher levels of abstraction for maintenance activities. This paper presents an overview of the case studies on various types of existing software system to recover the different artifacts existing at implementation, structural, functional and domain levels. As a result of these case studies; the factors on which reverse engineering process depends, features and elements required by the reverse engineering process to recover the artifacts for maintenance at domain, functional, structural and implementation abstraction levels in varying details for reverse engineering are identified and presented in this paper.

Key words: Case studies, software maintenance, re-engineering, reverse engineering, design recovery.