Legacy Components Stability Assessment and Ranking using Software Maturity Index

Component-based software modernization is technique that is widely accepted to have the greatest potentials in restructuring legacy applications into modernized versions with best qualities and maintainability attributes amongst other modernization techniques. This technique relies greatly on stable components extracted from the legacy system and selected for reuse. In selecting the components, some reusability attributes are usually considered of which components stability is one of such. However, the task of selecting stable components for reuse especially from legacy applications is a very difficult one due to inadequate techniques and models specifically designed for this. This research therefore, presents a technique for assessing the stability of components extracted from legacy applications using software maturity index. It also provides a means of ranking the assessed components with a scale comprising of Highly Stable, Fairly Stable, Stable, Unstable, Fairly Unstable and Highly Unstable to guide the choice of quality and stable components for reuse in modernization. The research further emphasizes the importance of proper software maintenance data recording from one version to another as such is a major requirement for legacy components reusability assessment.