User interface configured to display mechanical fabric and semantic model of a legacy computer application generated, graphical view navigating links between mechanical nodes and semantic nodes based on relevant business rules

A software transformation system executed on one or more computing devices and configured to transform a legacy computer application into a new computer application, the software transformation system comprising:

• a computer-executable transformation program including:
• a user interface configured to display at least a portion of a mechanical fabric and a semantic model of a legacy computer application generated by an asset-specific graphical generator to generate a graphical view of links between related mechanical nodes within the mechanical fabric and semantic nodes included in the semantic model, the user interface including controls for navigating to the mechanical nodes within the mechanical fabric and to the semantic nodes within semantic model, and for navigating between the mechanical nodes within the mechanical fabric and the semantic nodes within the semantic model along the links formed therebetween, the controls being configured to enable selection of at least one of the mechanical and semantic nodes to display information about that selected node which exposes one or more business rules that govern operation of the legacy computer application, where the mechanical nodes and the links between related mechanical nodes represent one or more of a system interface object, a computer program, a data access point, and a physical data model configured to store data records utilized by the legacy computer application;
• a modernization and streamlining sub-system configured to receive a collection of business rules identified through the selection of the mechanical and semantic nodes via the user interface and process the collection of business rules to remove obsolete business rules and thereby produce a collection of relevant business rules;
• and
• a model and standards development sub-system configured to process output of the modernization and streamlining sub-system to produce and output a new computer application based on the collection of relevant business rules.

A computer-executable transformation program executed on one or more computing devices, comprising:

• a mechanical fabric data architecture configured to represent a legacy computer application, the mechanical fabric comprising:
• a plurality of mechanical nodes interlinked by associations between the mechanical nodes, wherein respective mechanical nodes are configured to represent:
• a portion of code within a computer program;
• a system interface object implemented by the computer program:
• data stored within a physical data model;
• and
• data access points interlinking the computer program and the physical data model;
• a semantic model data architecture configured to represent operator-perceived meanings attached to human interactions with the legacy computer application, the semantic model comprising:
• a plurality of semantic nodes interlinked by associations between the semantic nodes, wherein respective semantic nodes are configured to represent:
• at least one business process of an enterprise;
• use cases for each discrete task within the business process;
• observable system interactions with the legacy application, by which operators interact with the legacy computer application, the observable system interactions being associatable with one or more of the use cases;
• the legacy application;
• and
• a logical domain model representing operator-perceived data processed by the legacy application;
• and
• a user interface configured to display at least a portion of a semantic fabric of the legacy computer application generated by an asset-specific graphical generator to generate a graphical view of links between related semantic nodes and the mechanical nodes, the user interface including controls for navigating to semantic nodes within the semantic model and to mechanical nodes in the mechanical model, and for navigating between the mechanical nodes and associated semantic nodes along the links formed therebetween, the controls being configured to enable selection of at least one of the semantic and mechanical nodes to display information about that selected node which exposes one or more business rules that govern operation of the legacy computer application.

A method of transforming a legacy computer application into a new computer application, the method being executable by one or more computing devices, comprising:

• receiving the legacy computer application to be transformed at the one or more computer devices;
• parsing the legacy computer application to identify mechanical assets of the legacy computer application, the mechanical assets including computer programs, system interface objects of the computer programs via which human operators interact with the computer programs, a physical data model representing stored data within the legacy application, and data access points through which the computer programs access the data stored in the physical data model;
• tagging the mechanical assets with semantic tags;
• creating mechanical nodes from the tagged mechanical assets;
• identifying semantic assets representing human interaction with the legacy computer application, the semantic assets including business processes, use cases of the business processes, and observable system interactions corresponding to the use cases;
• tagging the semantic assets with semantic tags;
• creating semantic nodes from the tagged semantic assets;
• linking the mechanical nodes to create a mechanical fabric representing computer-implemented operations of the legacy computer application and linking the semantic nodes to create a semantic model representing the human interaction with the legacy computer application, wherein mechanical nodes and semantic nodes having corresponding semantic tags are linked;
• presenting a graphical user interface including controls for navigating to the mechanical nodes within the mechanical fabric and to the semantic nodes within semantic model, and for navigating between the mechanical nodes and the semantic nodes along the links formed therebetween, the controls being configured to enable selection of at least one of the mechanical and semantic nodes to display information about that selected node that exposes one or more business rules that govern operation of the legacy computer application;
• identifying a collection of business rules that govern operation of the legacy computing application from the mechanical fabric and the semantic model, based on user input received via the graphical user interface;
• removing obsolete business rules from the collection of business rules to produce a collection of relevant business rules;
• and
• producing and outputting the new computer application based on the collection of relevant business rules identified from the mechanical fabric and the semantic model of the legacy computer application.