Application Programmer's Interface (API) for heterogeneous language environment and upgrading the legacy embedded software

Abstract

Legacy software systems in the Department of Defense (DoD) have been evolving and are becoming increasingly complex while providing more functionality. The shortage of original software designs, lack of corporate knowledge and software design documentation, unsupported programming languages, and obsolete realtime operating system and development tools have become critical issues for the acquisition community. Consequently, these systems are now very costly to maintain and upgrade in order to meet current and future functional and nonfunctional requirements. This thesis proposes a new interoperability model for re-engineering of old procedural software of the Multifunctional Information Distributed System Low Volume Terminal (MIDS-LVT) to a modern object-oriented architecture. In the MIDS-LVT modernization acquisition strategy, only one Computer Software Configuration Item (CSCI) at a time will be redesigned into an object-oriented program while interoperability with other unmodified CSCIs in the MIDS-LVT distributed environment must be maintained. Using this model, each legacy CSCI component can be redesigned independently without affecting the others.