Eiffel Software selected by the Navy for Analysis on Modernization of Legacy Software

Santa Barbara, California - (February 11, 2004) - Eiffel Software announced today that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract by the United States Navy (USN) for the "Modernization of Legacy Software".

Work on reengineering existing software has largely consisted of parsing existing code (machine of assembly), reconstructing the control flow and data flow, and providing hopefully equivalent behavior in a modern language. Eiffel Software proposes developments complementing current approaches by focusing on the high-level picture: the *contracts* behind software elements, expressing their specifications, according to the widely influential methodology of Design by Contract™ developed by the company. The approach, applied to legacy software units, will yield:       

• Key abstractions of the software, leading to a modular structure conforming to modern views of modularity, in particular data abstraction and object technology.
• For each software element, contracts expressing the purpose behind the implementation.

Such reengineering is intended to yield software that has strong modularity and precise specifications, and so is ready for further evolution and reuse with more recently written program elements benefiting from the full power of modern programming techniques.

Eiffel Software is a leading provider of Eiffel pure object-oriented programming tools. Founded in 1985, Eiffel Software produces proven tools and component libraries for business-critical and enterprise software developments. Eiffel Software's products enable their customers to output more and higher-quality software in less time than with any other development tools. Its users span the globe, in industries ranging from large financial institutions, technology manufacturing, government and defense contractors, to health care providers and more. For more information, contact us or call (805) 685-1006.